


Missing Persons

by fadeverb



Series: Leo [18]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 44,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo has misplaced his Djinn. Time to get him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which I Seriously Reconsider My Commitment to This Whole Partnership Gig

I wasted three days following up leads before I realized that I should've trusted my first response when I realized Zhune was gone. The bastard hadn't gone wandering off without me in the five minutes I spent not staring at him clinging to his Heart; he was well and truly missing. The kind of missing that doesn't mean anything voluntary.

It's easier to keep track of a Trauma-inert partner when your dissonance condition doesn't push you to hike to another city (insofar as Stygia has anything that deserves the name) every three days. I bet I wouldn't have lost track of him in Fire. It's easy to watch a lake of fire. A twisty maze of passages, all alike, not so much.

Which is why I'm standing in an alleyway of Stygia, all alone. It's grungy even by my standards, with potholes you could drown a soul in, a lingering Shedite kind of odor, and piles of trash composed of campaign flyers and body parts removed, most likely, from people involved in distributing said flyers. (You have to love Factions politics. Preferably from a safe distance.) The cold wind blowing down the alley snaps the corners of my jacket around me, like it's trying to steal the damn thing off my back. 

That's how you can tell you're in Valefor's lands. Even the weather is trying to rip you off. 

One of the piles of trash twitches when I walk past. A half dozen eyes open, and swivel in my direction. "Whose side?" the Shedite asks--gurgles, more like, and I can't tell if it's been near shredded or if its natural appearance is that of dismembered body parts. Shedim are like that.

"List a few options, and I'll see if any strike my fancy." I keep out of easy tentacle reach. I know what I look like, ragged and shoulders hunched, as if I'm waiting for the next blow, and it's not the way to project confidence around here, but fuck that. I'm not confident. I'm in serious trouble and looking for help. "Do you know if Henry's around?"

"Which side?"

"My own." I stomp on a tentacle that was trying to sneak my way, and keep it pinned to the ground with the heel of my boot while the Shedite wiggles. "Yes or no?"

"I'm here," Henry says, from about five inches behind my left ear, and the Shedite goes limp to avoid his notice. Either that or it's died of shock. "Leo. What an unexpected surprise. Here for a little chat? Or do you need to rush back to the corporeal and catch up with your partner?"

I don't like the way he says that last word, but my options are limited. So I turn around and give him that charming smile that only works on idiot humans. "You say that like I wouldn't come by just to say hello."

Most Impudites have better smiles than I do. Henry, creepy bastard that he is, smiles like a serial killer. He looks the way a Balseraph's vessel should: tall, thin, elegant, with spotless clothing that could have come out of a Victorian photograph. Today he's wearing a top hat, and suspiciously damp black gloves. "Who am I to turn down a social call?" he asks, with a languid flick of his hand so that we both know he doesn't believe me and that he'll play along while we're standing in public. "You must come meet my students."

The students prove to be a shifty little imp with big eyes, and a spindly Balseraph that can't have more than seven Forces. They have a squishy Djinn of about the same size pinned to the ground between them in a dark spot at the back of the alley. The student status of the Djinn isn't clear; the other two hold knives, held up questioningly as Henry and I approach.

"Children," he says, spreading his arms, "let's give a warm welcome to Leo. I've told you about him, haven't I?"

"Oh, yes," says the imp, while the Balseraph blinks its six eyes at me over and over again, wings curling in close. On the ground, the Djinn holds still, paws raised in front of its face.

"Make yourself at home," Henry tells me, and disappears before I have a chance to respond. I take a seat on the edge of a broken crate and check my pockets. The note someone slipped in there yesterday has vanished, so it's no longer my problem. How communication ever functions in Stygia, I don't know. A theft-based postal service is no way to run a Word.

The whole domain's been quiet since I got back. Since I've been here a grand total of twice before, the longest visit covering a week, I can't tell if that's normal or not. Stygia's supposed to be creepy. Quiet is one version of creepy.

"What's today's lesson?" I ask, left with three little demons who could take me if they ganged up. That doesn't seem Henry's style, but I'm not big on trusting unknown demons. Between Factions and Theft, "trust" is not a useful vocabulary term in this neighborhood.

"Reliability," the imp says, laying its knife at the Djinn's throat. "And how to deal with conflicting loyalties."

"Then once we're done," says the Balseraph brightly, "we get sewing class!"

"Let me guess. Djinn-hide gloves." I catch the pinned demon's gaze, and debate offering it some help. Could I talk two dinky little demons into letting it go, given ten minutes without Henry's interference? Almost certainly. Would I get anything out of doing that? Almost certainly not. Djinn aren't known for their passionate gratitude.

And I already have one Djinn in need of rescue. Let's not go multiplying our objectives.

Except it turns out maybe I'm getting soft after all that time on the corporeal, because a series of questions as to how the lesson is being taught, what led to it, and whether Henry sews his own clothing--also, where did he get that snappy hat?--means that when the Impudite returns, his students are sitting on the Djinn's chest having a friendly chat and there's no knife work happening, aside from the imp cleaning its fingernails.

"Really," Henry says, in a mild voice, and all three demons--even the one in imminent danger of blood loss--look guilty. "We might as well call that the end of class for today. Come back tomorrow and we can discuss matters of focus."

The three bolt in three directions, no matter that there's only one way in or out of the alley. Henry slings an arm over my shoulders in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of Zhune, and says, "Dinner? I know a charming place near here. It's ideal for conversation. I'm buying."

His smile hasn't changed, but the look in his eyes has. Someone's been busy tracking down new information when I wasn't looking. This should worry me, but I'll take what I can get. I'd rather have a dangerously savvy ally of uncertain loyalties than an idiot around. Idiots are easy to come by.

"Do they serve real food?" I ask, like I don't even mind he's pushing me around. I can destroy something later. It's time for some focus and charm.

"More or less."

#

The creepy part is that the restaurant, despite being stuck in the rickety seventh floor of a building that could serve as a prop for a vampire flick, is charming. All the damned souls serving as waiters have their full complement of limbs and behave respectfully instead of sniveling; most of the clientele consists of Impudites and Lilim; every table is set in its own room, so that the people eating there can pretend they have real privacy. (It's Stygia. I have no illusions about privacy.) The gas lamps make the place sort of cozy, like a family restaurant back on the corporeal.

For the sake of the illusion, I have not asked what the lumps in the pasta come from. I _know_ they're not chicken.

"They're better kids than some," Henry tells me. "I've had a 75% pass rate so far. Well. Maybe 50%. We'll see how it goes." He's playing genial tonight, like some sort of demonic uncle handing out quarters to nephews. It makes me nervous. It's the friendly ones you need to watch out for.

The friendly ones and the foaming insane ones.

Okay, the friendly ones, the foaming insane ones, and the clever ones.

Come to think of it, I don't trust demons in general. Funny, that.

"They're regular darlings," I say. "Are you still doing gatekeeper work for that Tether, or is it all babysitting?"

"Some from Column A, some from Column B." Henry rests the side of his fork against the edge of his plate; the gesture looks elegant and menacing all at once. I have got to learn how to do that. "I'm surprised Zhune isn't lurking in the nearest doorway. He was never the trusting sort, when it came to letting his partners out of his sight for more than an hour at a time. Trauma?"

I nod, mouth conveniently full of pasta, and wait to see how much I can spin out of Henry before I need to offer actual data.

"Both of you at once? Must be, what with the Discord. That must be difficult for you. I suppose you're enjoying a chance to make some rounds on your own. Djinn are so unreliable. First you can't get them out of your hair, then they never write, they never call..." His eyes narrow slightly at my bland expression. "Did anything exciting happen to send the two of you down here?"

I swallow a lump of something that does not taste like chicken. "Not all that exciting." Aside from the part where I may need to watch my back in case of angry Creationer attack for a few years. "The last job went smoothly, right up until our client was picked up by Malakim and started shrieking out every name and address he could think of to get them to stop breaking his fingers."

"That's your supposition?"

"No, that's what I saw." I wasn't impressed. What kind of demon gives out accurate information under torture? Especially when being tortured by Malakim, not Seraphim, who could tell the difference. My first supervisor would've had my eyes for that kind of failure.

"And suddenly, Malakim?" Henry leans in across the table, eyes ever brighter. He seems like he'd take stupid risks to make the job more exciting. No wonder Zhune liked him.

"Suddenly, us. Having every Theft bolt hole and contact in a three-state radius detailed out to a gang of Malakim looks bad on the yearly performance review."

"No one would have known you were in a position to prevent that."

"See, this is the thing," I say, pointing at Henry with my fork. "In my short but eventful life I've discovered that any time there's a small chance of some carefully omitted sin of mine coming back to haunt me, it _will_. Makes me a real team player, I tell you."

"Yet here you are, without a team."

"Don't go all Factions on me, Henry."

He spreads his hands, thin fingers flexing inside those black gloves. "I wouldn't dream of it. Local politics make for a fine hobby. Nothing more. Yet you must have something in mind, to go wandering this far without your partner. Or did sitting around in a dark room turn dull? If all you want is entertainment, I can recommend the coming elections. It's a good week to stay home."

"Elections? Since when is Hell a democracy?"

"The elections are for the representative parliamentary system that theoretically manages this neighborhood," Henry says, with languid grace. If it weren't for the horns, and the rustle of wings at his back, I could take him for a Balseraph projecting a vessel. That's a dangerous impression for me to get, though it wouldn't hurt to think of him as a liar. "The elections mean nothing, but they give the Factions children a place to practice their games. Having one's candidate win gives a certain cachet to fervent supporters."

"Not my sort of game." I shut up while a waiter sweeps in and out, leaving dessert in his wake. By Hell's standards, this is a luxury of suspicious proportions. Either Henry's been milking Tether traffic for every drop of Essence it's worth, and his students on the side, or he's up to something. From what I've heard about him in general Theft gossip, both. So I wait until he's smirking at me from behind a plate of ice cream, preparing to launch into some clever line of attack, and tell him, "Zhune's missing."

That holds him for a few seconds as he tries to catch up with where I've jumped. This time I wait until he's opening his mouth to respond before I continue, "So I need to know if you can find that ring again. The one you planted on him."

"I did no such thing," Henry says quickly.

This would go faster if he didn't feel compelled to lie. "Item the first: you slipped the ring on me. Item the second: you knew I would notice it on the corporeal. Item the third: you damn well knew how Zhune would react. If you planted it on him, he would've tossed it. On me, he kept it, just in case. Now, you can pretend that this is all supposition on my part, but since you've bought me dessert, I'm being straightforward. It might save you time and energy to do the same. Can you find it again?"

"What do you mean, missing?"

It's a good thing I've been offered dessert, because I'm going to need some kind of luxury to kill the headache that builds whenever I think about this. "I mean, gone. Not there. Vanished. Disappeared. Absent."

"Maybe--"

"No, he was _there_ at his Heart when I woke up. I know he hit Trauma, just like I did."

"It's possible--"

"Unless he's been outright lying to me, which is unlikely, he doesn't have another vessel. He'd have to ask for a replacement before he could run back to the corporeal. Would he do that without checking in with me? No. Especially since _I_ have another vessel. I was only waiting around until he woke up."

Henry adjusts his hat slightly. I don't think it's good table manners to wear a top hat to dinner, but what do I know? "You don't believe he would abandon you."

"I believe it's more likely that he's been a sleeper agent for the Game for twelve centuries and ran off to check in with them than that he'd ditch his partner like this. Yes."

"It wouldn't be the first time he left a partner."

"Yes, but since I haven't lost my last vessel _and_ every corporeal force needed to manipulate one, I'm thinking that's not the case. Can you track that ring or can't you?"

That was supposed to sting, but Henry only studies me evenly, and has another bite of ice cream. "You don't think he's in Stygia. Otherwise you wouldn't have come to me. How long have you spent trying to find him, since you realized he hadn't wandered around the corner to lie in wait for you?"

"Three days."

"Hardly enough time to cover all of Stygia."

"No," I say, and get back to my ice cream, because there's no point in letting it go to waste. "But enough time to find out that he hasn't been to the usual haunts. There's no gossip running about him being in trouble." I don't mention that there's been...no gossip. A lot of empty rooms and not a lot of talking at the few places I could find to visit. "No one in Stygia is so good at keeping secrets that they can keep a grab like that quiet. At best, they'd be spreading contradictory rumors to throw off any trackers. No word means it's not local."

"Or it's a local who's very good at this," Henry says, which is a possibility I've considered but discarded as not worth bothering with. "Which brings us to an important question in this little, ha, quest of yours."

I spread my hands. "Shoot."

"Why?" He raises a hand to cut off my first answer, and I only let him get away with it because I _do_ need his help, the smug bastard. "Have you looked at the risk/reward ratios in this plan? You imply that your partner has been abducted by some unknown outside source, and you propose to...what? Track him down and retrieve him?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it."

"So I repeat. Why?"

"He's my partner," I say. "Figured you would understand."

"Oh, I have no doubt he would go to that trouble for you," Henry says. "But that's because he's insane, in that particular Djinnish manner. You have no such excuse. Whatever can keep him from you, down here in Hell, you can't handle on your own. Even if you are as clever as he says. What do you expect to do? Storm the walls of the Game's prisons?"

"If it comes to that, I'll find someone else to do the storming as a diversionary measure while I walk in through a side door posing as a new recruit."

"Bad plan."

"I know, but it's what I've got on five seconds of hypothesis. Give me an hour, and I'll come up with better." I scrape up the last of the ice cream, trying not to ponder what they used for cream substitute. "Besides, I don't think the Game has him. They might do a hit-and-run to get him into custody, but the secret police needs everyone to _know_ there's secret police to keep the terror levels high. Grabbing someone like him, and then not saying a damn thing about it? Anywhere? That's not like them."

"You're attempting to evade my point," Henry says. "My truly excellent point, namely: you are setting yourself on a fool's mission that would be a waste of your time and your life. Tell me you have some clever plan that changes the odds on this game. Try to be convincing."

"Sure," I say. "I'm asking you for help."

"That's your big plan?"

"Got it in one."

"And if I say no?"

"I'm already on plan C, Henry. I'll come up with D if I have to."

"Do any of these plans involve asking our Prince for assistance?"

This is one of those annoying questions I'm only willing to answer because I'd rather not move on to Plan D: Start Piling Up Geases. "So I should take several days to arrange for an audience, show up, and say, 'I've got no idea what happened, but I need help fixing it, and also I'm going to need a vessel for my partner whenever he gets back.' You know what that would get me? 'Sounds like a problem, Leo. Why don't you go do something about it?' At which point I'm right back where I am now, except I've wasted more time _and_ annoyed my Prince."

"So you'd rather waste my time and annoy me?"

"Sure. Were you doing anything important?"

Henry laughs, and pushes back his chair. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"That happens a lot, yeah."

Despite that unpromising prediction, he waves for me to follow him, and leads me back out of the restaurant to a walkway suspended between across his alleyway between different stories of two buildings. It sways like a rope bridge and looks to have had bodies fall through portions of the flooring, but he stands in the middle and waits for me to join him there before he's willing to speak further.

"What do you want me to do?"

"If you can track that ring? Give me a direction and distance, then a few hours of your time so that we can run to another place and do the same. Hell's geography gives me headaches, but some rough triangulation will give me an idea of where to look."

"And then...off to storm the walls of the Game." Henry takes off his hat, and lets it rest beneath his long fingers on the railing of the walkway. One of the gusts of wind that are always snapping through Stygia will steal it away from him, if he's not careful. "Triangulation," he repeats, and chuckles. "You have a very un-Calabite approach to problems."

"Not really. Theft is good about misdirection and coming at things from a different angle, and our Prince? A Calabite. The Band just gets bad press because of Belial."

"Your former Prince."

One of them. People always make that mistake, and much as the distinction is important, I don't correct them anymore. "So are you going to help me, or aren't you? Because dinner was great, but I should keep moving if I need to start working on Plan D."

"You never answered my question."

"He's my partner, okay? He saves my life occasionally, I prevent him from seeing any movies in peace and quiet, this thing works for us. If I don't get him back, I may end up with someone who won't put up with my shit."

Henry leans right into my personal space, the way Zhune used to. Does. Will do again, as soon as I can find him. (Why does everyone get to be taller than me? At least my real self isn't as short as my female vessel.) "You're going to die," he murmurs.

"Might." Down the street, a streetlight flickers where a slimy demonling tries to climb inside. I have to wonder if my tendencies towards loyalty and dedication to friends are like that: a pathetic scrambling towards something shiny that will hurt more if I reach it. Zhune has ditched partners before, and he will again. He's twelve centuries old and then some. I've spent a hundredth of that on the corporeal plane. Our partnership is a cigarette break in the work week of his life.

"Very well," Henry says, from right next to my ear.

"You're going to help me?"

"I'm coming with you," he says. "That old bastard's too tough to die off, and if I let you walk into this alone, he will come back to blame me for your inevitable end."

"And by blame, you mean--"

"I'm sure we could elaborate," Henry says, "but if we mean to move, let's move quickly. Unless I have any chance of talking you into waiting? He'll show up. Trust me on this one. There's no getting rid of him."

"How hard did you try?" I ask, and only get a smile to make me wonder.


	2. In Which Geography Is Not My Friend

Here's the thing about Stygia: the map that exists is not the true map. Or, more bluntly, there's no such thing as a static landscape. The celestial plane is, according to all demonic theory that I've heard, more real and true and important than the corporeal plane, but I don't buy this. On the corporeal plane, major geological incidents aside, a mountain you see one day will still be there the next time you stop by. In Hell? You're lucky if the borders between the various neighborhoods of Hell stay the same from one year to the next.

Which is only to say that the math for working out signal tracking on what's a weak signal is complicated, and deeply lacking in enough significant figures to make me comfortable with my results. The ragged peak I was using as a directional marker six hours ago doesn't seem to _be_ there anymore. Either that, or we've gotten a lot more turned around in this trip than I planned. It's not as if I've been trying to cross Stygia, just walk from one lurking filthy town to the next to get some good distance on the points.

Henry has been remarkably game about standing in one place or another and pointing, but I can tell he's not impressed by the process. "We could ask around," he says, while I'm trying to figure out yet again if his point is more of a forty-five degree angle or fifty-degree one from my arbitrarily declared north. "That might be faster."

"I already tried that. Stop wiggling." 

"I am not _wiggling_ , Leo. I am holding my arm up for an unreasonable amount of time while you fiddle with paper." He lets his arm drop, and I call it forty-seven degrees. Close enough. How does anyone build anything in Hell without constant geography? Hell may be nasty to everyone, but it's surely a special kind of hell for architects. "You'll find that networking will get you further than science."

"Don't knock the science. It's gotten me out of many a scrape." I take a seat on wedge of rock to run the numbers against a low-detail map of dubious reliability.

"Didn't it drop a building on you once?"

I keep forgetting that demons gossip like it's going out of style. All the more so the ones stuck in Hell, and even the ones who _aren't_ stuck in here swap news on the way through. I'm never going to have a decent social network so long as my trips back home are strictly limited to post-death experiences. "That wasn't the fault of science, it was the fault of the Balseraph who talked me into standing there." I'd mention taking out most of a triad and a whole pack of Malakim in the process, but I don't like to brag. Not about incidents that left me dead.

"Yes, we've all heard about your scorched earth policy when it comes to being backed into a corner." Henry looks far too amused about this. An irritated Impudite will whine about fashion. An amused Impudite is _dangerous_. "Did they ever release that poor Lustie you pointed the Game at?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." My map's coated in lines, all of them too imprecise for my liking, but there is a vague sort of convergence appears. "Does Zhune have any enemies in Shal-Mari?"

"At his age, I'm sure he has enemies everywhere." Henry rests an arm on my shoulder while he leans over to look at the map. "That looks as if it might be pointing to Tartarus. Or Perdition."

"It's not an exact science. But since Shal-Mari's the easiest to get into, we can start there." Perdition's not hard to reach from Shal-Mari, and while I've heard that the Perdition/Tartarus border is so wide anyone could get through...Tartarus would be a problem. A serious problem. I'd sooner try to break Zhune out of a Game stronghold than try to walk through the land of Technology. At least the Game lets Calabim work there. Technology probably has kill-on-sight orders for my entire Band within Mad Prince Vapula's realm.

"You may be better off going over the list of people you've annoyed recently."

"That's one long, long list, Henry."

"You can narrow it down to those in Hell, and not from Stygia."

"It's a sad commentary on the state of relations between parts of Hell that this doesn't reduce the list much." I fold the map up, and hand it to him. If I keep it on me it'll disintegrate. Besides, Henry seems like the sort of person who wouldn't betray someone until a dramatically appropriate moment, so if I trust him with small things, he'll live up to that trust.

Probably. I'd complain more about demons being untrustworthy if half the angels I'd met weren't equally so.

We collect the Djinn from where Henry left it tied to a rusting hook embedded in the rock. Keeping a Djinn on a leash strikes me as kinky, but Henry seems to regard it as a practical approach to dragging around a young demon who might be useful for discovering trap-filled passageways. I'm not sure that dragging around someone named Snitch is the best idea we've ever had, but neither do I want to walk into one of the razor wire traps that young demons (and gangs of humans) set for fun in the catacombs. 

"Shal-Mari passports aren't cheap," Henry says, as we set back down the mountain. "Much as the place professes to be a tourism destination, there's a surcharge for entrance based on the premise that anyone entering from the direction of Stygia will steal at least that much on the way through."

"If they don't want things stolen, they shouldn't own things other people want." I take the leash from Henry so that he can climb down a rough section of the path with a hand free to keep his top hat in place. Snitch huddles against my legs, a heavy warm weight that's always threatening to step on my feet and send us both plunging to our doom. It's got a leonine sort of shape, with enormous paws and black-gold fur. Almost cute from the right angle, if you go for the Binder type.

I wonder if Djinn fledging into lion-types has been a fad in Stygia since that one time with the Cherub, and then I decide I don't want to think about it. Bet Henry would've loved the spectacle.

At the bottom of the path, where a catacomb entrance looms--and how you can have catacombs when you don't have death in Hell the way it works on the corporeal, just non-fatal pain or Force-shredding, I have never determined--Henry picks up the conversational thread like we never stopped. "Do you have a clever plan for passing the security checkpoints?"

"Does either of us have a vast supply of credit, represented in untraceable, transferrable small items that can be exchanged for goods or services?"

"Not since the run on Mammon's banks."

"See, this is why I prefer the corporeal plane. People there understand concepts like money. Money that you can hold a near-infinite amount of, instead of needing to get special artifacts just so that you can save up for a rainy day." Maybe I've gotten too accustomed to the utility of bribery, when in a job with a lot of disposable income I'm expected to regularly dispose of. "You know, my econ professor would have an aneurysm trying to comprehend the economy of Hell, so I'm not going to try. Why don't you tell me how you got into Shal-Mari the _last_ time you went that way?"

"I walked past the checkpoint while Zhune was ripping off a guard's head."

The two of us look down at Snitch. It stares at the ground, and does not look like anyone who can rip off anyone else's head.

"Right," I say. "Plan B."

"Run?"

"...not a bad one in a pinch, but I guess I mean Plan C."

"Kill everyone, then flee from the disturbance."

"D?"

"I believe that involved the Song of Thunder," Henry says, "but it's been some time since it came up."

I duck into the mouth of the catacombs, as the flock of demonlings wheeling through the sky could be problematic if they decide to descend on us in one group. Winged slime small seldom has a sense of self-preservation. "You and Zhune weren't the _subtle_ type when you worked together, were you?"

"Those were simpler times," Henry says, adjusting his top hat as he follows.

"What, the 80s?"

"Not _everyone_ had a cell phone in those days. There was more flexibility in how much noise could be thrown up before every celestial in the area converged on one point." He picks up a rock, and shies it expertly at a demonling that wings too near the entrance. There's a surprised squall, and then nothing but splattered demonling across the ground. I should remember that whole bit about not turning my back on this guy; some people forget that Impudites only refrain from killing _humans_. 

"Maybe we can try for subtle," I say, as we set off down the tunnels. Henry's leading, but Snitch is the one who gets to walk in front, its leash wrapped around Henry's wrist. We'll hope that anyone trapping the place put the triggers on the floor and not, say, throat level to an Impudite. "Whichever lettered plan that is. On a job like this I'd rather not pull the Game down on our tails first thing."

"No, you save that for the grand finale, don't you?"

"I have no idea--"

"Let's see." Henry chooses branchings of the tunnels unerringly, or at least with a show of confidence that, given the lack of a good map, will do in its stead. This area's full of niches carved in the wall like they're waiting for bones, and high arched ceilings that disappear into shadows at the intersections. "There was the time you dropped a building on Judgment."

"Not my fault, or my idea."

"The Stone Tether you set on fire."

"One, not my idea. Two, not the Tether itself. Three, didn't work."

"That showdown with Servitors of the War and an entire SWAT team..."

"...okay, so that one was my idea, but in my defense, they were the ones who started it. Besides, that's not the Game."

"The incident with the ethereals in the junkyard."

"One ethereal. And that was Nightmares. Fuck, they weren't even aiming at me that time." Though I'm not about to explain why I was running for cover with a Mercurian of War.

"The Game's law offices that went up in a massive explosion."

"There wasn't anyone inside. And it wasn't a Tether. Also, I didn't do it."

"The incident at the Sword Tether with the Song of Thunder--"

"How do you know about these things?" I resonate a meaningless bit of the wall into powder to calm down. " _Why_ do you know these things? Do you maintain some sort of list?"

"Yes." Henry brushes pale gray powder off his black gloves, holding us all up until they're spotless again. "Leo," he says kindly, facing me directly, "despite the reputation Theft sometimes garners, most of us confine ourselves to small, dramatic gestures, in which buildings do not go up in flames. Many Servitors of Theft, even on the corporeal, can go for _years_ without running into angels in any significant manner, much less killing a dozen of them in one go. After a while, people notice patterns, and some of those people gossip. Or sell information to interested parties. Now, you can keep denying that you were involved at all with that one Impudite of Lust being dragged away by the Game, but do you expect me to believe that?"

"I'd like to think I retain plausible deniability." Or enough of it that Lust isn't gunning for me. Presumably if anyone _important_ over there had noticed I was responsible, there would have been some sort of official notice--or stabbing--what with our presumed buddy-buddy status and all. Stepping into Shal-Mari is going to be a lot more dangerous if Lust wants me skinned and no one told me. None of Zhune's other friends in Lust said anything, but Servitors on the corporeal gossip about what's going on there, not who's being tortured indefinitely back in Hell.

"You'll never get a reputation for being a demon no one should dare cross if you don't take credit for your overreactions," Henry says, as if he's lecturing one of his students. Which must be showing on my face, because he follows that with a friendly, "Or you can play up the mystery, and keep people guessing about your limits." He snaps the leash to tell Snitch we're getting back to the walking part of this trip.

"I'd rather people leave me alone."

"Now that's a Djinnish approach. You've been spending too much time around Zhune. What you need--"

Except I don't get to find out what Henry's Lilimish opinion of me is, because the ground drops out from beneath Snitch, and where that demon falls, the leash goes too.

I dive for Henry while he's still disappearing into the hole, and grab one knee right in time to get yanked along. So it's one boot dug into a niche in the wall, the other braced as best I can on the ground--it's rough enough that friction is working with me here--and I find I'm trying to hold up two demons, dangling above I don't know how deep a pit, without a lot of security.

There is a quiet moment while we all breathe and try to figure out what the hell happens next.

I'd drop the two of them and be done with it, but I'm going to need Henry's help. "See if you can grab the wall. I don't have any leverage up here."

"Fuck this," Henry says, with remarkable calm, but I hear claws scrabbling away, and the weight eases up a little. So that's one useful thing the Djinn's done for us so far. Good thing I didn't let them flay it.

"Fuck gravity," I say, and resonate a jagged hole in the floor to hook my sliding foot into. My arms are starting to ache, if not so fast as I expected. It's weird now and again to remember that in Hell, I'm not a wimp by demonic standards. It's more on the corporeal that people consider me the small, squishy type of Destroyer. "You know what's stupid about gravity? That here in Hell we don't have to have it. It's only turned on to screw with us." I break out a second hole, since that niche is only so much use, and try to work out how I'm going to pull the two of them up. Stronger in Hell only goes so far. "...you're not using a hand to keep your hat on, are you?"

"Don't be absurd," Henry says. He sounds exceptionally calm for someone dangling upside-down by one leg. Maybe it's the expectation that if he drops to the bottom of this pit, it'll hurt, and might take him centuries to get out, but it won't kill him. You need serious intent to rip Forces off. "That's what an elbow is for. I'm trying to get this leash off."

"Nix that. The only reason I'm not dropping you is that _someone_ down there is holding up some weight, and it's not you." If I could see down, maybe I could knock out some holes in the side of the pit for them to climb up, but these catacombs are too dark for precision work.

A more pressing problem: I can hear something coming.

I keep my grip on Henry's leg while he and the Djinn work out how they're going to get back up, and cant my head around until I can see who's come to investigate the noise. The good news it that everyone looks to be human: a bunch of damned souls, and probably not more than five Forces to any one of them. The bad news is that there are about a dozen of them, and here I am with my hands full.

"Great," I say, to the nearest of them, a lanky woman in old tweed with a piece of rebar in hand. I can respect a good piece of rebar. "Someone showed. Does anyone have a rope?"

"Seems to me you're in no place to be giving orders," says a soul to her left, a translucent sort of man who's probably lost a Force here or there. "Unless you want to start making deals..."

I keep my eyes on the woman, because where she stops--out of reach for me, but not _quite_ out of resonance range--all the others stop behind her. "I asked nicely, didn't I? Now, I figure either you can give me a hand over here, and we can talk like reasonable folks about payment and so forth, or this can get unpleasant for multiple people. We're not who you set this trap for."

"You're sure of that?" asks the woman, with a narrow smile.

"Actually, yes. Because I'd like to think you're all competent enough to have a rope or ladder at hand, and if you're that competent, you could've done a better job than this if you wanted to catch _us_."

There's some shuffling and exchanging of significant looks. I grit my teeth and maintain a friendly smile, while Henry's leg starts slipping through my hands. If I have to drop him--I'll apologize to Zhune later. It wouldn't have to be much of an apology.

The woman steps forward to the edge of the pit, and gives me a hand. A moment later her whiny friend is there too, and in short order we get Impudite and Djinn back on level ground. Henry's kept his top hat. Snitch has lost fur around its neck where the collar was holding its weight.

"What clever little creatures," Henry says, and smiles at the lot of them in general. The smarter ones start thinking of other places they need to be. "Now, why are you installing new traps in this place? I would think there'd be enough to suffice for any mortal needs."

"It's not ours," says the woman, at the same moment that her sidekick says, "None of your business," and then a whole lot of shouting starts because apparently there's some long-running dispute in the group about how to deal with demons. You'd think that damned souls in Hell would go for a defensive subservience approach while plotting subtle revenge on the side--it's what works for me against opponents I can't face directly, which is most of them--but no, they're having a whole political argument on approaches. In front of us.

Henry and I exchange a look, which clarifies our respective opinions. Then we pick up the loudest of the "Don't cooperate with demons" group and fling him in the pit. It won't kill him. Two more into the pit, the woman lays about her with the rebar, and we're down to a handful of polite souls.

I don't know why we need Factions. Humans manage the work on their own.

"Right," I say to the four souls remaining. "Now that we've fixed that, what'll it take to get us a guide through here?"

"I have a few ideas," Henry murmurs, looking the humans over in much the way Ferro used to examine new cars. I imagine if the Impudite could stick a hand inside one and puppet it--well. That's not too far from what his Charm does.

"Yes," I say, "but they're more mobile with all their limbs still attached, and they seem like nice people." I smile at the leader of the group like I'm the Impudite here. If we're going straight to good cop, bad cop, I get to pick which side to play. "How about this. We're heading for the Shal-Mari border. Get us there safely, and maybe we can lend you a hand with something."

Henry gives me a look that suggests this is not how one is supposed to deal with damned souls, but if he had a better idea, he should've been explicit. "We're not Lilim," he says.

"All the better, because they can't make things explode with their minds." I stride up and sling an arm over the woman's shoulders. Who says you can't learn management techniques from Princes? "So tell me, what do you want? Got enemies to kill, walls to destroy? But make it snappy, because I don't have all day."

The woman swallows. She's shaking under my arm; it must be an act of will not to pull away from me. "I want into Shal-Mari," she says. "Me. Them. All of us."

"Nope," I say, because I think Henry's about to stab me if I don't rein this in a bit. "Too much. Take the two of us to that border, on a fast route, and we'll bring you in and one other. Two human servants for two demons is reasonable." There's also Snitch, but none of us think it's particularly relevant to this discussion. "You can pick who else when we arrive. Deal?"

"Deal," she says quickly, meaning that I'm offering her far more than she thinks the bargain is worth. I'm fine with that. I need to get my Djinn back before--I don't know before what. Maybe "before" has already passed, and I'm too late, but I want him back as soon as possible. I don't know how to do this Stygia thing without him.

Shal-Mari has got to be easier. They say it's the most like the corporeal, which has to count for something.


	3. An Interlude, In Which My Partner Has Strong Opinions On Current Events

He woke, and his Heart was not there.

No Heart. No vessel, to pull its image about himself. No sight, no light, nothing but a dull heaviness over and around and through, as if he were drowning in midnight waters (which death had that been?) and oh, that memory, of seeking for his partner and feeling nothing but the blank space where she had once existed. Sinking deep and fighting to not care that she had once been and was no more--

But that was a long time ago. A long time ago, in another country. And (as Leo would say) the wench is dead. A man (a Djinn, which was merely another sort of man, a being, a creature of claws and teeth and eyes and will, while humans were merely shadow images on a cave wall) should not focus on the past. That path, all tender grass beneath the feet and gentle shade to the back of the neck, led to endless silence in Trauma, and then eventual soul death. When one's Prince found one useless.

No. He was in the present. He knew himself to be useful. That partner was long dead, murdered by servants of Waters (see, who had the last laugh there?), and he was still alive. He stretched out his awareness, and _there_ was his partner. Alive and whole. Good. On the celestial plane with him, which was...less good. Distant. Bad. Hadn't he taught Leo to return? Tangled and tied him, given the child three quarters of everything and kept the vital quarter for himself, so that he could be sure this one would never run. Couldn't run.

Yes. He was certain of himself, of his own actions and plans. Conclusion: someone else had interfered. Had dragged him far away from hearth and home, kith and kin, and he was...angry.

The world shook around him, and he was glad that it shared his anger. Something had to be done about this. Something would be done. He would be the one to do it. Voices, muffled by liquid and distance, fought above him. Enemies or the servants of enemies, unless this was one of those games where no one cared for him in particular, but used him as leverage against another.

He liked those games the best. (Personal enemies were so tedious, petty, predictable. Personal enemies could not hurt a man in any interesting way. Emotions interfered, turning the fight into a long sequence of obvious attacks and obvious responses. He never made personal enemies, if he could help it; best to remove those who held grudges before they could bore him.) Friends and masters could destroy him, and second-hand enemies, he could destroy in turn.

Perhaps those who had taken him from his Heart were second-hand. That would be a game worth playing. Enemies who wanted to use him never knew him well enough to prepare.

Zhune flexed his claws. He could not move, breathe, speak, see. No matter. He could wait. He knew himself to be a very patient man.


	4. In Which Boundaries Are Crossed

Henry sits on a rock carved in the shape of a Balseraph's skull, though it's the size of a sofa, and rests his shiny black shoes on Snitch's back. "You don't make deals with damned souls," he says.

I don't have time for this nonsense. I have a map to mark up and a lot of fidgeting to do while we wait for the humans to return. I don't trust a one of them, but needs must, and right now I need my partner back like some sort of neon sign over my head blinking Lilim Apply Here. Rock crumbles where I touch it; I'm carving out a doghouse for Snitch while I wait, out of twitchy boredom. "Why not?"

"Because they are the humans, and we, Leo, are the demons. Do you make bargains with dogs, when you travel the corporeal plane?"

I look back at him and his elegant sprawl. If he were a Balseraph, I'd probably be having inconvenient responses to that posture, but I'm just not that interested in Impudites. "You're telling me you've never traded a watchdog a handful of jerky to let you walk past in peace and quiet?"

"Bribery is a bad precedent to set," Henry says. "Pets need discipline, as children do. Boundaries and reliability, so that they know to sit and stay on command, and don't whine at our ankles when we have other important things to be doing. Hand out too many treats, and they come to expect them."

"We serve the Prince of Theft. Fuck discipline and boundaries." I kick in the door of the doghouse. There. Space inside for something Snitch-sized, if it wants to flee its footstool arrangement. It's a decent design, like some sort of playhouse for imps. "Have you ever heard about the contractor triangle? Fast, cheap, good. Pick two. I'm not willing to drop fast or good for getting this job done, so that means cheap is our obligatory sacrifice."

Henry pinches the bridge of his nose. "Theft means we take. We do not...trade. Especially not with inferior species."

"What I find interesting," I say, "is that you're assuming I'll hold to my end of the bargain."

"I expect you will," Henry says, "which only goes to show that your, mm, partner ought to have given you a more thorough education before letting you run about in Stygia unaccompanied. I am attempting to compensate for this oversight on his part, because he is an old friend, and I feel some responsibility towards his half-trained, half-brained partner in crime. How long do you intend to wait for these humans to return?"

So he can't hear the scrabbling towards us that I can. Useful to know. "Long enough," I say, and smooth my expression into pleasant confidence when the tweedy woman slips over a shadowed wall to land on the ground before me. "Cleared a path?"

"Yes," she says. It's a little surprising that she seems to be telling the truth. Either she's a better liar than the average mortal, or she's willing to take a chance on my promises. The former is a much better survival trait in Stygia. "Once there, you'll need passports to cross. For all three of you, and two of us."

"Theft," I say, and shrug. "Shouldn't be a problem." I smile at Henry to remind him we don't want to be fighting in front of the mortals. "Zhune always said you had fast fingers, and I'm willing to believe what he says."

"However," Henry says, with a sweetness that I suspect hides gritted teeth and, if I am unlucky, some sort of increasing desire for revenge, "With a quota of five, we will need some sort of diversion at the checkpoint to allow the procurement of said passports, and then to move through with them before anyone discovers their documentation to be missing."

"Naturally." Diversions. I'm good at those. Better when I have some explosives on hand, or something flammable available. How much do I want to bet the Stygia/Shal-Mari border is protected by something sturdy? And I haven't so much as a lighter on me, down here. I should've saved that pistol from my uniform when I ditched the jacket from the War. The jacket Zhune got me as a replacement is conveniently free of any markings that suggest an allegiance, not to mention fitting around my wings a damn sight better; it's also free of anything in its pockets but a handful of powder that used to be bottle caps.

I serve Theft. Why don't I have more resources?

The woman lifts her shoulders, and lets them drop. "Four would be enough," she says, and now is when I notice that her tweed has picked up new stains along the sleeves since we last saw her. "This way."

She scrambles over the same wall she came from, and we follow more easily. It drops us into a tunnel so narrow we're forced into single-file. The damned in front, followed by me, Henry, and Snitch skulking along on its leash. Having the two of them at my back makes the space between my wings itch. On the other hand, if anyone tries to stab us in the back, they'll hit Henry before they hit me. He's taller.

"Why do you want into Shal-Mari?" I ask the woman, since she isn't making any dramatic motions regarding keeping us quiet in here. There are noises off down other corridors, scratching and hissing and dripping, but Stygia is supposed to be creepy. Not worth paying attention to anything until it starts approaching.

"Too many enemies around here," she says. "They say that in Shal-Mari, you can just...disappear into the crowd. Walk down a street and take two turns, and no one will ever find you again, in those masses."

"And that doesn't sound the slightest bit ominous to you?"

She snorts, arms folded before her and shoulders hunched in. Like I'm about to attack her from behind. Why would I want to do that? Too many demons in this place have nothing better to do than harass other people. Hell needs to ship them to the corporeal plane where they can spread out a little, or stop making so many. "My ability to worry about 'ominous' burnt out a long time ago, sir."

"Don't call me that."

"What?"

"Sir. Makes me sound like an officer." I watch where she steps when she starts putting her feet down carefully, and do the same. Henry's smart enough to pick up on this without needing to be told; Snitch squeaks once, and then apparently figures out it should be imitating its elders. So it can learn.

"What would you prefer I call you?"

Now that she's asked, I don't have a good answer. On the corporeal plane, I'd go by Role name when I had one, or my real name; the two were usually about the same. "Never mind," I say. "Doesn't matter."

Henry makes a tiny noise behind me that would make me deeply concerned about the continuing structural integrity of my back if I thought he were willing to stab me quite yet. Apparently that was the wrong answer. Maybe he's just pissy because I'm doing all the human-wrangling, instead of letting him do it as the Impudite.

The woman stops at a blank stretch of wall, and stretches up on her toes to reach for some catch in the wall that I can't even see. A door swings open, blocking off the rest of the tunnel. "This will take us back to the main route," she says, "after which you can find the border easily. It's obvious from there." She stares directly at me.

It takes me a moment to realize she's just trying to prompt a betrayal now, if it's going to occur, so that it'll happen when she's ready for it. "Lead on," I say. "If anyone set new traps since you checked, I don't want to step in them." And that seems enough to satisfy her.

She was even telling the truth, which is starting to unnerve me. The door takes us to a bland tunnel with nothing creepy going on, which leads us to an enormous twisting cave that you could shove a freeway through without any semis losing their roofs. If anything in Stygia counts as a thoroughfare, this cave qualifies; souls and demonlings skitter back and forth across the floor, making their way in one of two directions. Back in. Towards the border.

I strike out for the border, and keep an eye on our human guide. The light's better in here, coming from no source I can identify. Her tweed jacket is spattered from cuffs to elbows in bloodstains.

Here's something to remember, for the casual visitor to Hell, who maybe hasn't spent much time around souls who weren't screaming day and night in pits of flame. No one makes it to Hell for not saying the right words or believing the right bit of theology or just not being _nice_ enough. Every soul in Hell is here because there was a point in their life that was the lowest they could reach, the worst they could be, their capital letters and say it like you mean it Fate, and they made it there. If fellow demons weren't enough to keep the lot of us solipsistic and selfish and ready to betray, the humans would.

But I'm still keeping my promise, so long as she keeps up her end of it. Henry's trying pretty damn hard to imply that this is a bad thing. That I ought to keep up a reputation as someone shifty and prone to stabbing people in the back. But what would that get me? Less opportunity because of less trust. Better that people--the ones who care what my reputation is, or give me one, and I'm still not sure why there should be anyone at all in this category--consider me someone reliable. Someone who keeps promises.

If they still decide to break their end of the bargain and hurt me, that's what Zhune is for. He'll get revenge for me, and get me out of trouble. That's why I need him back. I can't do this Theft thing without him; it's not bred into my bones, the way it is for Henry, and presumably shuffling stupid little Snitch.

Pickpocketing will not come easily in this crowd, if you can even call it a crowd. There are demons starting to appear in the group skulk towards the border, a tiny Shedite here and lumbering equine Djinn there and two Lilim strolling along together arm in arm, but between Factions and Theft, we're all too wary to let strangers sidle up nearby. If I'd known this would be the environment, I would've found a way to invite the Philosopher's Debating Club along. Watching for strangers, or hearing yourself think, or any other useful activity is effectively impossible once someone brings up Derrida in front of those guys.

Henry drifts nearer to me. Maybe I should be careful about letting strangers sidle up as well. "I hope," he murmurs, as we walk side by side and pretend we're just paying attention to our route and guide, "that you have a clever plan in mind for this distraction. Even with a heavier crowd than usual, we might find passage problematic, otherwise."

If this is a heavy crowd, I wonder what a light one looks like. I aim a little nearer the Lilim, because there's no way Henry will swipe anything from those two if we're obviously nearby. I don't want to get hooked by any bizarre combination of Need-reading and deliberately unconcealed passports. "I always have a clever plan." I have no idea what I'm going to do, and how does he expect me to think of anything when I haven't even seen the border clearance process yet? Now, if I just had a roll of aluminum foil and a mob of winged demonlings at least three dozen strong...

"That's what Zhune said," Henry says sweetly. He tips his hat to the Lilim as we pass.

Oh. It is on.

Barricades and blast walls start to appear along the edges of the cave, funneling us together in nearer and tighter quarters until we've got the population density of a campus thoroughfare when classes are in session. No one close enough to come in danger of rubbing elbows, but we're near enough that no one can keep an exact eye on who else is directly behind or moving past on the right or otherwise...near. The center of the tunnel fills with souls and demonlings, the ones too small and weak to walk along the walls and keep one side against that dubious protection, and then a few narrowings later, there aren't many souls or demonlings left to take the center. Just us demons, heading for the border, with the odd small one attached to someone stronger: Snitch on its leash, an imp perched on a Calabite's shoulder, a Balseraph trailed by a much smaller exact replica of itself, and me with this woman in tweed, who walks a pace behind me with her head down, arms folded, as if she's waiting for my orders.

I don't want minions. That's never ended well. Solveig and Katherine and Nikostratos... I suppose I did right by Ferro, if I did with any of them. It said it would forget me, and I hope it was telling the truth. Ethereals should stick to the Marches, and not get tangled up in the mess that is the corporeal while Heaven and Hell fight over it. Why would they even want to go down there, when they have an entire world to themselves? I'm not even from the Marches, and I'd go back there if I could.

No. Bad thought. I don't need to run away. Can't run away with an unbroken Heart, and that's another thing that's never ended well. I have a partner to retrieve. He'd never forgive me if I just went off and left him, and I'm pretty sure that Zhune's version of never forgiving is at least as terrifying as my old Habbalite supervisor's was.

The tunnel does not, as I had hoped, open up to to the sky, where I might find a demonling flock (even if I still have no foil, or even mirrors, for that plan). It ends in a loosely packed crowd--none of us want to touch each other, with good reason--standing before an enormous set of bars that run floor to ceiling. Two gates stand in the bars, with demons positioned on each side. There's a thin line from a thin crowd letting people into Stygia, and on our side, all of us trying to jostle for position in that pseudo-line to get _out_ , without actually doing the sort of jostling that requires body contact. The little clone-Bal hisses at Snitch when it comes within a few feet of its svelte golden tail.

"Any time you feel like showing me the results of your intellectual labor," Henry murmurs, "I am ready to follow your lead." I would say that some day this asshole is going to get what's coming to him, but I get the feeling that losing Corporeal Forces, vessel, and partnership were all the karma he's ever needed. And it didn't even teach him to be a more pleasant person.

"Patience," I say, in my best imitation of how Zhune says it, and I smile at the way his jaw clenches. "Have a little faith in me, will you?"

The two Djinn in uniform--who knew Shal-Mari had uniforms?--checking passports at the gate we're approaching are far beyond my head-ripping abilities, even in Hell where I can pack a better punch than I do on the corporeal. No imp flocks available. Nothing looks particularly flammable. Definitely not a situation where I can call in mortal authorities, or, ha, angels. I'm getting the uncomfortable feeling that clever only goes so far when you don't know your environment, and oh, I do not know this place at all.

This is not home. This is not even where I keep my stuff.

"I'm waiting," Henry says. We're four demons from the front of the line. Five, if we shuffle a little to the side and let the Balseraph duo steal our place.

"You don't trust me?"

"Leo," Henry says, "while I have the utmost belief in your--"

I'm on the ground, ears ringing. Thunder--no, that wasn't even the Song of Thunder, which was racing up my options list, but the ground's shaking around us. Dust cascades from the ceiling, and every demon with two legs or fewer has hit the ground with me. A Djinn guard snarls, and pounces, as one of the Lilim tries to slip through the gate that's swung open, on her hands and knees and not fast enough to escape his paws. The second Djinn lunges in to help her partner, and then the second Lilim breaks back the way she came, her Band Sister screaming for help.

I grab the hand of the women in tweed, and run for the gate.

The Balseraph pair slips past me, and through the gate, the smaller one hissing proudly in its master's wake. I dodge a wild paw-swipe--those guards aren't entirely distracted yet--and run through the gate like it's nothing, nothing at all, because someone else gets to have their face eaten today. How many people showed up without passports? How many people mean to sell theirs if they can get a free run through? We're Theft, and we don't do customs checks well.

The guards on the other side, Calabite and Djinn, are still getting back to their feet. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and the floor's still shaking, irregular shocks that buck beneath my feet like I'm trying to run across a Balseraph's back. (Did that a few times, in Gehenna. Wouldn't recommend it.) The woman I'm pulling falls to her feet, and I drag her on. I said I'd get her into Shal-Mari. Doesn't count until we're past the border.

I can _feel_ the Calabite at my back trying to shove his resonance into me. Captain Savas was better at that. This try I roll off my back, and it explodes against the floor to my left, which is looking patchy already as debris rains from the ceiling. I'm dragging the woman across the ground like dead weight, though I'm almost certain she can't be dead, not from a little environmental attack alone. You can't just die in Hell. Someone's got to care enough to _make_ you dead.

A rock bounces off one of my horns, so hard it leaves me blinking away stars. So those idiot attachments are good for something.

The shaking's ebbing, though the cacophony behind me says that's not the earthquake (do we have tectonic plates in Hell? surely we don't) subsiding, but me outrunning its range. People are blowing Essence left and right; I haven't had to resort to that yet, which is good, because it's the only currency I've got for the work ahead. I keep running until we've broken into a crowded plaza of--I don't know what, stalls and stores and demons and souls and sedan chairs and some sort of horrific beast of a Vapulan SUV that's just run down a demonling as it plows across the cracked stones. I can't take it all in at once, not least because of how much around me is lit up in neon. But I slow down. I stop, because I can't run through crowds. That's Zhune's thing.

Or Henry's thing. He slips between people so lightly they might be made of water, and says, "That was your plan?"

"No," I say, "that was taking advantage of an opportunity. I don't like to be locked down in my options."

"Clumsy," Henry said. "How can you plan for anything like that?"

"You seem to be missing the value of improvisation." I squeeze nearer him to avoid having a sedan chair try to plow me over. "Where's Snitch?"

Henry shrugs, and holds up a broken leash. "Perhaps it will have a valuable learning experience. What about your human? Do you mean to keep her?"

I'd almost forgotten she was there, and I'm still clutching her wrist. Getting my hand all bloody in the process, too; that's going to stick. She's gotten back to her feet, looking a fair amount bruised and scratched, but still alive. "Bargain's done," I say, and let go of her hand.

Henry sighs quietly, and steps forward suddenly, putting a hand to her cheek. "Poor darling," he says. "You should never look like that by accident. How are you feeling?"

She swallows, and I think she knows. She can't have been in Hell all this time and not know, and even so, all she can do is say, "I feel fine, sir."

Henry raises her hand to his lips, and presses a kiss there. "Would you like to stay with us?"

"No, she fucking well doesn't." I detach the woman from his grip, and turn her around. "Go. Shoo. Disappear into the alleys of Shal-Mari. We don't need another sidekick." And when she turns around to protest, I shove her forward, hard enough to make her collide with a damned soul carrying a tower of packages. "Go away. Before I make you."

Henry eyes me sidelong. "Was that necessary?"

"Did you get her Essence?"

"Yes."

I wipe my bloody hand off on my shirt. Looking a little violent can't hurt around here, not any more than looking like my Band would anyway. "Then I don't see why we need her presence. I'm trying to find a Djinn--" I shut up and hustle out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, squeezing between two booths to something that is not privacy but gets us out of the main line of traffic. "--not start a parade. If you wanted a minion, you should've kept _your_ Djinn with you. Maybe we can find you a replacement."

Henry gives me a long and level stare. I think I won that one. I think it's going to cost me.

"Look," I say, "if you want me to recap my brilliant plan that didn't involve an earthquake, let's find a bar and I'll satisfy your curiosity. Otherwise, let's find a place to start pointing from again. Does that sort of thing happen often?"

"All the world shaking?" Henry asks.

"Yes. That."

"No," he says. "Only when one of the Princes of the land is exceptionally angry."

I take a moment to digest that, and move the option of asking my Prince to help me further down the list of options. It was at the bottom of the list, slightly after "cast myself on the mercy of Heaven and see if they'll give me a hand in this," but now it's moving into negative numbers. "Do we know which?"

"No," Henry says. "However, of those available, I know which is better known for having a short temper." He adjusts his hat, tilts it forward, adjusts it back into place again. So I'm not the only one having a little internal panic attack at the thought of Valefor being upset.

"Bar," I say. "Somewhere with quiet tables, where we can spread out these papers and get a new reading."

"Bar," he agrees. "Somewhere with televisions, where we can catch the news."

I didn't even know Hell had news broadcasts. Of course it does. Nybbas. But I didn't know, and I didn't know that I didn't know.

I graciously concede the decision to the Impudite, and let him lead the way to some bar he's been to before while he talks about what he and Zhune did the last time they were in Shal-Mari. It's not important enough for me to pay attention to that. I've got to work out where my areas of ignorance are in Hell before they get me killed.


	5. In Which We Become Better Informed

I don't know why the Princes decided to shove Shal-Mari up against Stygia, because it's fire and ice to move between one and the other. Nothing in Shal-Mari is creepy, not even a pack of poorly-dressed Impudites kicking a little Habbalite into Force loss and death, because there's so much noise the entire place seems surreal. Unreal. And I say this having grown up in Sheol, where the screaming of the eternally burning damned are background noise you learn to tune out like the hum of an air conditioning unit.

Plenty of people are screaming in Shal-Mari, but I can't hear them, because of every other conversation in the world. I've never seen streets on the corporeal packed so tightly as these, and a lot of people travel in groups, here. Pairs and clusters and what look to be little coordinated gangs, entourages for demons and chain-gang lines of demonlings, all of them with something to say to their companions. To shout, more like, because every doorway we pass blasts music or advertisements, and a quarter of the walls around here are plastered with television screens. With sound.

If I hear the commercial jingle for My Little Mammon one more time, I'm going to find an excuse to burn down a Tether of Greed on principle.

Whether out of duty or sadism, Henry hasn't ditched me. In these crowds, he could slip away in an instant, and leave me to find my way back. But either he wants Zhune back home as much as I do, or he's waiting for a more exciting moment to betray me. So he sticks so close one of us might as well be on the other end of the broken leash he's carrying, and I let him lead. So long as he's the one trying to remember directions, I get to watch the horrifying sensory overload of the scenery, and try to work out how you'd get some more coherent traffic patterns in here. 

Mark out some multi-level lanes--there's a huge amount of vertical real estate on these streets that isn't being used right now, and a good staircase at every corner would take care of movement between levels, along with letting more people have streetfront property instead of trying to shriek their business slogans down at us from five stories up--and then get something like those border guards in here to maintain a little decorum. All the Balseraphs and snottier demons would love having a walkway restricted to the right kind of people, and you could charge out the nose for access badges, plus secondary badges for their entourages. And then maybe they could devote a tier to those horrible cars, which don't seem to move much faster than any of the pedestrians, but do run over people periodically. Of course, this would work even better if the Princes running this place were willing to reduce the gravity enough that wings meant something. The sorts of traffic lanes you could arrange if this city was willing to take advantage of all three dimensions would show up anything humanity could ever create on the corporeal plane.

And instead we get a badly zoned version of New York City with a much nastier smell. Why, exactly, do we claim that we're the winners around here? I wonder if the angels just copycat the better corporeal architecture, or take advantage of the whole anti-grav option over there.

There is something deeply surreal about this city, where complete strangers shove past me in every direction and I've stepped in a half dozen bodies (or Shedite trails, hard to tell) on a half hour's walk, that it would make me think of such things. I should know better.

Henry shouts something I can't make out, and indicates the door to a bar. It is, like most everything in Shal-Mari, decorated in flashing neon advertisements (I think I recognize that brand of beer, and it's terrible) and spewing out high-volume music from the Nybbas entertainment machine, but aside from that, it could almost fit into Stygia. Dark, dank, dirty, and thirteen steps lead down to the open doorway. If there's any sort of sound-proofing in there, I will take it.

The doorway takes us into a narrow corridor with walls that don't meet at ninety-degree angles. No wonder he remembered this place. The hall turns three times, the level of neon on the walls reducing with each turn, until it spits us into a bar where I think I could hear myself talk at a normal volume. The walls are papered with bright advertisements for beer and brothels, and posters for movies that let me know Hell did acknowledge corporeal fashion of the 1980s, and it wasn't pretty.

A Habbalite in a natty suit stands right by the entrance, next to a chromed machine that looks like nothing so much as an ATM that wants to kill someone. He smiles at us hopefully, revealing metal teeth embedded with flashing lights. "Change tokens? No one wants to pay a full Essence for a bottle of beer, gentlemen. One Essence gets you ten tokens, accepted at all reputable Shal-Mari locations."

"I remember how well that worked during the run on the banks," Henry says dryly, and slides past the Habbie. There's not quite enough space in this doorway to pass by without rubbing elbows.

"That was Greed-backed currency," the Habbalite insists, "all stock bubbles and unreliable investments, whereas you can rely on Technology. It's all up and forward and into the world of tomorrow with Technology."

"Really," I say, and the tech-riddled Habbalite discovers that it can squeeze backwards far enough to let me into the bar without us rubbing anything. Elbows, wings, tech, anything. His ATM crackles with static electricity. "So how many establishments in Shal-Mari trust your tokens?"

"Enough to keep you happy doing anything you can afford," the Habbie mutters, trying to bend further away from me without looking like he's doing it. "However, if you're not interested, I wouldn't want to detain--"

"No, no," I say, "tell me how it works. Just look at all those shiny buttons. Must take a fair amount of prodding to make it work right. But if you'll tell me what I'm supposed to press, I'll see if it works. You're doing beta-testing, right? Or is this alpha? I'm willing to take a chance on new technology. We've all got to do our part to keep heading towards that world of tomorrow."

"Quite all right! No, there's no need! I've done...demonstrations. We have all sorts of data ready." The Habbalite can't decide if he wants to hide behind his machine, or shield it from me with his body. "You should probably go. Now. Have a drink."

I shrug loosely, and put on my best idiot bruiser smile. "But I don't have any tokens, and I don't wanna spend a whole Essence on just a drink in the bar."

"Have one. Complimentary. A thank you from Technology for completing our customer satisfaction survey. Have two!" The Habbalite shoves two round chips into my hands. "Lovely speaking with you please come again I'd better just start packing this up and move on to my next scheduled demonstration, if you'd just step aside and let me start the disassembly process."

I meet Henry at the bar, while he gives me a thoughtful sort of look I don't like at all. "Here," I say to the bartender, and hold up the two chips. "What's this actually worth?"

The Djinn points wordlessly to an advertisement for the most popular beer in Stygia, then holds up two claws of its crooked paw. I slide the tokens across the bar, and receive two bottles.

"Right," I say, and hand one to Henry. "There's my contribution to this visit. If you'd be so kind as to find us a table, I need a place to spread out that map."

This room is all made of corners and booths, lurking spots occupied mostly by Shedim, Djinn, and Balseraphs. More Djinn than anything else. An Impudite in animated, hushed conversation with a Djinn falls silent as we pass her, frowning intently at Henry. And here I thought I might be the one to stand out. I wonder if this is the kind of bar Zhune likes, when he visits Shal-Mari.

I wonder what he did--and what Henry did--the last time they were in here.

Henry picks out a booth that has us each on a leg of an L-shape seat, neither next to each other nor looking directly at each other, and it points us at a television--not flatscreen like all the giant ones outside, but a cranky old bulbous VapuTech one with three lines of negative color running across the image and a tendency to swap every few dozen frames to a single frame from a different channel. He spreads out a map of Shal-Mari I didn't even know he had, and points wordlessly.

"Thanks," I say, and get his angle recorded promptly. There's no reason to push my luck.

"In retrospect," Henry says, his eyes fixed on the television screen, "we might have wished to run the other direction when the gates opened."

I look up at the flickering screen. A Lilim with a brilliant smile is chatting with a beautifully sleek gray-shaded Balseraph at a news desk. The sound's turned off, and I don't think Hell believes in closed captioning, but the additional information scrolling above, below, and to both sides of the picture gives me information I didn't much want.

_since 1562. Official statement of the Game states that this is merely a statistical anomaly, not_ says the ticker on the bottom.

_of Inside Jobs held during an investigation into attempted theft in a Tether of_ says the ticker on the top.

The column on the left is just giving out names. Most of them have distinctions attached. Two of them are people Zhune introduced me to, right before we did some job or another for them. That Calabite with the knife he couldn't stop singing to, the Djinn who asked for help doing furniture rearrangement inside a prison warden's office. I've heard of some of the other names tangentially.

The column to the right has two tiny inset images. A representative of the Game giving out some sort of press conference, bland-faced as any Habbalite can ever be, and a Balseraph strapped down for some official questioning. The type that comes with knives.

I blank on any appropriate curse words in Helltongue. And somehow the perfectly good English all-purpose curse word, "Fuck," seems inadequate here. I shrug like this isn't making my mouth go dry, and drink more beer to take care of the fact that it does. "If he's dealing with a really bad bad, why should we want to be nearby? Best to give the whole domain some space and get some work done out here. Go back when we have a success to report."

"While I would never go so far as to imply cowardice on your part--" Henry actually stops at the look I'm giving him. "It doesn't look good to run away in times of trouble. Run from trouble itself, certainly, but this sort of retreat could give the wrong impression. Especially for those of us with work to do. I suppose if you haven't anything better to do, I could offer you a temporary position on the upper side of the Tether. How do you feel about the education of children?"

"I feel like I ought to drag my partner back home before I get involved in any long-term projects," I say, which is a lot more polite than the response which occurs to me involving putting his head through that television.

"And what if he's on that list, Leo?" Henry nods to the television, and I get the feeling he's keeping his voice down and his movements small because he doesn't want attention from anyone in this bar on this point, not the Impudite shooting him dirty looks from three tables away, or any of the quiet tables, or the near comatose bartender or that ridiculous Vapulan packing away his token machine.

"Then that's going to make breaking him out a lot harder, but I don't see his name there yet." All the names I recognize are people I met on the corporeal. Wordbound don't lounge around in Stygia looking impressive, they run around on Earth supporting their Words and making other people do the same. A list of important people looks impressive, but what this says to me is that any big Game raid that swept up a lot of Theft was aimed downstairs. Not in Stygia. Not at someone who I saw clutching his Heart in that vault, out cold in Trauma and not particularly accessible.

Except someone did get to him. Someone stole my Djinn, and I am going to find them and get him back and make them pay, if I have to find a Vapulan weapons merchant in Shal-Mari who's willing to deal with Calabim to get it done. There's gotta be a way to set a portion of this city on fire if it comes down to it--not the whole thing, or Belial probably would've done that before--and it could only improve the local architectural situation.

Henry pinches the bridge of his nose. "Leo," he says. "The darling partner of my old, dear friend. Let me give you some advice. When someone who has served Theft for a century offers a plan, some sort of structure and set of goals, for how best to please the Boss, this plan offered to someone who's done somewhat under a decade of work there, statistics would suggest that the latter ought to listen to the former."

"Henry," I say, with a nice low-wattage smile, "I appreciate your advice. You know what you're talking about. But I would have to be a lot dumber to go play babysitter for imps while my Djinn has been stolen, and expect that master of stylish larceny will approve. Where's your sense of adventure?"

"He's not your Djinn," Henry says. "You aren't the first partner he's had, and you won't be the last."

"My partner. My Djinn. The important point in all this, Henry, good old friend of _my_ partner, is that we are Theft, and no one else gets away with this. No one outside the Word gets to take what's mine until I decide to give it away, and I. Have. Not."

Henry's hands are white-knuckled on the edge of the table. And I am nose to nose with him. Gotta get better about the temper thing. I sit back down, and we both drink our beer like nothing happened.

"Do you have a clever plan for what to do if he isn't here?" Henry asks at last. "Not in Shal-Mari, or not with the ring. He might have wandered away to fence it in a more exciting location. It wouldn't be the first time."

"I'll improvise," I say.

Henry stands up. "Get the map," he says. "I will give you one more chance, and then we are going home."

The list on the broadcast still doesn't have Zhune's name on it.

I wonder if that's the name he went by when he was in the Game. It can't be unique, anyway. Lots of people end up with the same names. So even if they have him, it might be another name, and even if they have him by the right name, they wouldn't know. He's kept away from the Game this long, I just can't see him being jumped at last during Trauma and found out that way. It wouldn't make sense. It has no...style.

This fucking Word is wearing off on me, isn't it?

We get out of that bar without anyone jumping us, but that place between my wings itches. Like we're being watched, and maybe it's just that after a week in Stygia, having people look at me at all feels like they're watching me, despite the lack of intent. We push right back into that noise and crowd outside, and hike a few blocks down so Henry can doing his pointing thing again while I check it against the map.

That angle's changing. We're getting close.

And when we spin and point and hike around on his feel for that stupid little ring and end up at a ragged third-story used goods shop, I don't know. I don't have a clever plan. The silver ring sits in a case with a jumble of jewelry, most of it not artifact enough to appear on the corporeal plane, and there's nothing to go on here.

"Let's go home," Henry says, and he sounds so amazingly smug that I grab him by the throat and throw him across the room. Halfway across, what with the racks of clothing and shelves of goods in the way. The Shedite manning the counter squeaks, and ducks down low, while Henry rolls neatly back to his feet. "If you don't calm down--"

I remove half the floor beneath him. "I am calm," I say. "Look at how calm I am." I can speak in a level voice, because in this stupid little shop where the noise still bashes in until we can barely hear each other, there's no use in getting angry.

"I will not hold this against you," Henry says, catching his balance as he pulls his leg out of that hole, "because one must make tolerances for youth, but I recommend you stop this before I come over there and feed you your own teeth."

"Outside," suggests the Shedite. "It's a great show, but outside! You're going to owe me for breakages."

"I'd like to see you try it," I say, and ignore the Shedite. If it had any real protection to call in, it would've called for that already. "Maybe you could convince me you have the guts to see a job through."

Henry steps forward briskly, and drives one gloved hand through the glass of the jewelry case. He picks out the silver ring out of the shards and cheap trash, holding it up between two fingers, and asks the Shedite, "Do you have any record of where this came from?"

"Some brothel," the Shedite says, curling back upon itself into a gooey lump behind the reliquary bolted to the counter. "They bring junk in, big bundles, stuff customers leave behind. Floors of bars, all sorts of places. Mostly brothels."

Henry flicks the ring in my direction. I catch it in the air. I still can't feel anything from it, except that it's an artifact of sorts. "Keep it," he says, "for what good it does you. If you want to search every brothel in Shal-Mari, be my guest. No one can say that I didn't try to do right by you, for the sake of an old friend."

I don't lay a hand on him while he walks out the door. If I started, I'm not sure I'd be able to stop, and Zhune would hold it against me. He'd forgive me for it, but he'd rub my nose in the consequences and tell me to think more long-term. Remember that every act of revenge can itself prompt another act of revenge. I don't know what other friends Henry might have, who'd hold it against me.

Never mind that. I can't keep thinking about consequences, or I'll never get this done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must give all the credit for My Little Mammon to a friend of mine, whose Lilim of Greed inspired great things in that particular campaign. (And if he ever ends up having a profile here, I'll link accordingly.)


	6. An Interlude, In Which Somebody Dies

The Balseraph in the corner had lost a wing, and thrashed wildly, trying to curl about until it could protect the portions of itself where hide had been ripped loose into jagged shreds. Everyone else in the room was too busy getting the Djinn shackled back down to pay attention to the Liar, who whispered to herself, "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine," over and over in a stream of words that were of no importance to the others.

Unathi snapped together the clasp, and let out a breath it hadn't known it was holding when the Djinn slumped down again. The Balseraph's blood was thinning from black puddles to gray-purple clouds as water continued to pour onto the floor. "Someone get that closed," it said, and watching narrowly to see which of its followers was first to leap for the door to the waterway and shove it closed. The Calabite (a Force short of where it had been before the Djinn broke free) reached the door first; the Shedite (suspiciously unharmed in the melee) was the one with enough shove to get it closed and stop the flow of water.

Its followers had names, nonsense and presumption as demons usually came up with for themselves. It thought of them as Prima, Secundus, and Tertium, in order of their nearness to the Lightbringer. "Good," it said to the Shedite, Tertium, who had no more sense than any other demon, but sense enough to listen to an angel of God and do as it was told. "Now bring him along."

The Shedite and Calabite hauled at the chains, and watched for teeth. This was a sign of fear, which Unathi meant to scourge from their souls at its next convenient break in its schedule. (Revenge was, alas, not amenable to scheduling, and so everything else had to be shuffled about to suit the sudden use of the time slot.) The two of them dragged the Djinn across the floor, through blood and water, towards the stairs.

"Could we use the service elevator?" asked Secundus. Demons had no sense in general, but with the exception of its mighty Prince, Unathi had generally found Calabim to have the least sense of all.

"Use the stairs. It will build character." Unathi snapped its fingers, and pointed. To their meager credit, its followers complied without further argument.

When they had gone, Unathi went to examine the Balseraph.

"I'm fine," she said.

"Prima," said Unathi, "I find myself disappointed in your performance today. You were given one simple task, and failed. What do you have to say in your own defense?" It crouched down beside her, and set the stump of its wrist to the place where her wing had been removed. "Look at the two of us, now. Each missing something we would rather still have. However, only one of us can truly be considered at fault."

"I'm sorry," the Balseraph panted. "I'll be more careful. Better. I'll be stronger next time."

"No," Unathi said, "I don't believe you will be. Forgiveness is a virtue, as is patience, but all of us must learn when to cut our losses." It took from its belt the serrated knife given to it by its very Prince, a gift it had treasured on all three planes of existence ever since. "Would you like to keep your eyes open, or closed?"

It had some compassion for the weak. They couldn't help themselves. Because she did not answer, it plucked out her eyes first, and ate those, before moving on to the rest of the work of butchery.

Balseraphs were, deep down, much like any other snake, allowing for a certain amount of metaphorical projection within the celestial realm. It had butchered snakes of the more mundane sort in market squares, breathing in the stink of the corporeal world and all the humans crawling through it. Snakes and goats and chickens and eels--come to think of it, a Balseraph was much like an eel in places--and any number of interesting animals, along with a brisk trade in the so-called thinking animal that made its home there.

In any case, the process was simple. There wasn't much in the way of jointing to do. It simply removed her remaining wing, pinned her down with a foot to the throat--not a proper throat, but one might as well call the stretch of body directly beneath the head by that name--and a foot halfway down her length, and then skinned off her hide. That would have come off more neatly when she was fully dead, but the disbandment of Forces could cause difficulty in getting a proper stretch of skin. It would have preferred a less marred Balseraph skin, but Unathi was willing to blame the Djinn for that part. No, that wasn't Prima's fault at all. It would only put the wing and hand to her account.

It cut off her muscles in long strips, and devoured them from the knife's point. Three bites in, and it could feel its stump tingling. Three strips, and the hand began to grow back. By the time the Balseraph had shrilled itself apart with the loss of its final Celestial Force, nothing but a pile of meat and bone and guts and hide, Unathi's hand was as good as new.

No, no. As good as old. It had lost its tattoos, and as an even greater loss, the patch of skin it had sewn in from the hide of an old, dead enemy. Unathi flexed its fingers, and sighed. The saying was true: no plan survived contact with the enemy.

No matter. Onward and upward, and it had never had much trouble discovering new enemies to destroy after the old ones were long forgotten. It could almost see already where a patch of Djinn fur would compliment the tendons of its fingers, wrap in a bracelet about its wrist. Perhaps embed a few teeth at the knuckles, for an interesting punch. It did like the occasional bar brawl. One couldn't get too hoity-toity in the service of its Prince. Looked bad on performance reviews to be all champagne and no barbecue.

Unathi cleaned its knife back to a shine, and then gathered up the Balseraph hide. The lack of commotion from upstairs meant that its followers had stowed the Djinn away properly, in a satisfying show of competence. It would have liked to retrieve this enemy with a lower attrition rate--reducing one's entourage from five to two was the sort of thing people noticed, out on the Shal-Mari streets--but when would the opportunity have come up again? When opportunity knocked, one did not tell it to return after dinner.

It tracked down the owner of the establishment in her office. An Impudite in fine form, with a body much like the sort Unathi wore on the corporeal plane, though it couldn't imagine wanting to have such a thing as one's true form. She had her feet propped on the desk, watching the news ramble across a television screen. And she did, thank all that was holy, have enough manners to shut off the sound on that before trying to hold a conversation.

"You can have free use of the basement room," she said, "so long as you stop tracking all this water across my floors from the sub-basement. It sounds like you don't have to worry about unexpected guests after all."

She nodded to the screen, and so Unathi took a moment to consider what the news was claiming to be true, and to further consider how much of that reported news was likely to bear any relationship to facts.

"A bad day for Theft," it said. "No, I don't expect any trouble, but in this wicked world of ours, who can be sure?" It hung the skin across the back of a chair. "Would you have this cured for me? You'll find some raw ingredients for the cafe down in the sub-basement. Damp, but otherwise fresh." Unathi dug through its pockets, and removed a handful of other items. A silver ring, a battered lighter, three bullets stamped with the symbol of the War. "And if you could find a way to dispose of these for me..."

"Sure," said the Impudite. She set aside the television remote, and swept everything it had laid out into a box. "I'll send it down to the store with the usual lot. You know, if you have demons to spare, I can find better uses for them alive. There's always demand for more upstairs, and with the way some people feel about Balseraphs, the little ones can get a good price."

"She was damaged," Unathi said, "and not terribly competent."

"Some people like them that way." The Impudite shrugged, and dropped to her feet. "Your minions, your call, but you know how high your tab is going to be on this one? Even without any need to call in security if inconvenient guests arrive."

"Don't I always make good on my debts?" Unathi asked, and received a kiss in return.

"You always do," said the Impudite. She ran two fingers down the side of its face, where a strip of skin from a very old enemy had first been inlaid. 

That one had been an Impudite, and they both remembered him well, though Unathi had made a point of forgetting his name and face. All it cared to remember of that relationship was how everything had ended, and the screaming.

"Well," Unathi said. "Business to do, knives to sharpen. May I use your lending library? I'd like to look up some inspiration. It's been so long since I worked on a Djinn. They so seldom have the proactivity to cause me any annoyance."

"Freely," said the Impudite, and picked up the box of junk. "Dinner? My treat."


	7. In Which Information Wants To Be Free

The first time a Lilim looked into my eyes, saw what I wanted, and gave it to me, I ended up with a Geas that eventually had me destroying a set of law offices belonging to the Game, and rescuing a Habbie of Dark Humor along the way. So I've been wary--understandably wary, I'd say--of picking up any more since. More trouble than they're worth. Zhune tells me that sometimes there's no avoiding it, unless you go into full Balseraph of Factions paranoia about never accepting a damn thing from anyone, and he's probably right. But there's a big difference between "You can't always avoid it" and "Hey, buddy, let's go seek it out!"

But here I am, standing at a respectable distance from a sprawling brick monstrosity that is justification enough for the execution of whoever designed it, watching Lilim stream in and out of the place along with a lot of potential customers. And thinking about joining the customer service line myself. I'd rather rip his pointy little horns off than admit it to his face, but Henry's right on this: I am out of clever plans. I don't even have a map anymore, because he took the marked-up copy with him. I don't have explosives or allies or car keys or so much as a box of matches, none of the useful things I know how to improvise with. There's no "call in the mortal authorities" or "run to that Tether for help" option in Shal-Mari. There's just me and what I have on me.

Inventory: one Calabite of Theft, formerly of War, formerly formerly of Fire, slightly used. Pretty good at making things explode with his mind. Three quarters of a uniform from the War, covered up by one battered jacket. Nine Essence. Dust in my pockets. One protractor, cracked down the middle because I've been holding it too long.

Which means there's no "Let me buy my way out of this" option without Geases. Nine days of Essence won't buy me into a top-ranking brothel, much less find a missing Djinn and get him out of...wherever he is. Because wherever he is that keeps him from meeting up with me, it's not going to be easy for me to pull him out of alone.

Or maybe not possible. He's tougher than I am. Older and more experienced. With more friends and allies and favors owed to him, more resources stashed in odd places...

But I'm smarter. If I can get enough information to work with, I can do this.

I pull in my wings so I'm not going to smack any touchy Lilim in the face, and head for the nearest entrance. There are vendors just outside selling sunglasses at jacked-up prices (which phrase implies there's anything but jacked-up prices in Shal-Mari, and I doubt that's so), but why would I want that? Everything I need right now, I need badly, and I'm willing to pay for. If someone wants to come make an offer, or deliver me a misplaced Djinn because they saw I needed him that badly, they're welcome to charge me the going rate.

I make good on my promises. Maybe that's not actually a good thing to have as part of your reputation in Theft, but it's something, and I'm sticking to it. Penny would never deal with me otherwise.

I wonder what he'd think of this place.

I hope he's never here to find out.

The first floor inside seems divided into roughly two zones, in a convention hall sort of room almost as packed as the streets outside. To the right, people offer job opportunities for Lilim. Sign up here to work for Theft, Technology, Lust, a special project sponsored by Gluttony, a high-paying focus group for don't-ask-what by Nightmares. I follow a current in the crowd to my left, where the Lilim have their own booths and signs up. Despite what propaganda from Lust would have you believe, there doesn't seem to be a lot of sex for sale on the lefthand side; there are thousands of brothels out there for anyone who can be that easily satisfied. But groups of Lilim offer corporeal-side resources, entourage services, help with border crossing--another focus group? Apparently in that one you sit around letting Lilim read your Needs while they wave advertisements at you. Must be a Nybbas thing.

I track down a booth labeled _Information_ in flashing green letters, and wait in line behind a pair of Djinn holding hands. Paws. Some sort of appendages. The pair has a long, convoluted set of questions for the Lilim at the desk, all passed on in nervous whispering and repeated glances around to see who might be listening in. When they scurry away together, paw-to-paw, there's a new Geas band hanging around each one's wrist.

The Lilim at the booth turns out to be one of those rare male-type Tempters, slouched over the counter with his chin in his hands and chunky black glasses on his face to make him look like Hell's most misplaced hipster. I've never met a male Lilim before, but I've heard of a few; my first supervisor had one as an assistant before me. "Whatcha need?" he asks, and points to a sign to his left. It's all in small print, but I get the gist fast: an hour-Geas for successfully answered questions, guarantee of no other hooks laid by the Lilim in the booth, and if you don't like the answers you get you'd better not try to take it out on the Lilim or someone will be along shortly to rip your fingers off. I can work with that.

"I need to find someone," I say. "Sort of missing person case. Who do I talk to for that?"

The Lilim huffs out a sigh, and thinks about this. "Depends. Debtor, enemy, that sort of thing? Someone who's trying to stay away from you? That'd be the bounty hunters--"

"No," I say, "it's more of a kidnapping case."

"We can hook you up with Theft, if you want someone kidnapped," the Lilim says. "They're the pros at this, and we've got plenty of folks for you to talk to."

"More the reverse. Someone kidnapped my Djinn, and I want him back. I think he's stashed somewhere in Shal-Mari."

"Huh. First time I've heard that one today." The Lilim finally straightens up, and yanks a laptop out from under the counter. He starts tapping about on that, and I back up a few inches so as not to destroy any equipment I might be expected to pay for. "Some of the brothels aren't too picky about where they get their employees, especially the rougher ones with heavy staff turnover. Some sort of sexy, sexy Djinn? Leonine types are all the rage lately." He peers at me through his glasses, gaze more intent now in a way I don't understand, but dislike on principle.

"Anything but sexy. You could mistake him for a Shedite in bad lighting."

"Ew. Mind, some places cater to that--takes all kinds in this world--but..." He sits back, staring at the laptop, his hands raised like he was interrupted in the middle of typing. "Huh."

"Huh?"

"Hm."

"Look," I say, in my sweetness and light and not about to assault anyone voice, "I'm not really willing to pay full price for 'hm'. Could you elaborate a little bit?"

"Yeah, yeah," the Lilim says, and sneaks another look at me through those glasses. He flips the end of his scarf back and forth between his fingers, typing one-handed. "Looks like I can maybe help you find someone who'll help you find your someone, if that's going to be enough to meet your standards? Because I'm not a Shal-Mari directory for missing people, here. I just point you at the people with the real answers."

I spread my hands. Waiting.

The Lilim scowls at his laptop screen. "Look, it's--okay. This is a little complicated. Tell you what. Grab me a latte from the booth over there and by the time you get back, I'll have a real answer for you on who can help you out. And I won't charge the hour for it. Deal?"

"Deal," I say. "Latte preferences?"

"This is Hell," the Lilim says. "If I wanted a decent latte, I'd have to travel to Seattle to get it, and who can afford that kind of trip? Get me whatever they're offering that doesn't look to have Shedite in it."

It takes me twenty minutes of standing in line to swap Essence for a latte that can't have been handled by a Shedite, unless they have some hiding beneath the Lilim at the coffee stand. I'd better hope that nothing's happening to Zhune right now that he's not up for handling, because if I lose my partner through needing to run coffee around for someone--well. I don't know if that's irony, or the sort of thing that keeps Dark Humor happy, or just eerily reminiscent of my internship at that Fire Tether when I first got to the corporeal. At least no one here is resonating my mind into any of an exciting variety of emotions. Yet.

When I get back, the Lilim's got three people in line, but he waves me forward to take the latte, and hands me brochure in return. "Go there. They're expecting you."

"They're going to charge me a fortune, aren't they," I say, and flip the brochure over. It's just some glossy _Nybbas News Network Needs You!_ pamphlet, but he's written a set of numbers on the back. If I look up at the ceiling, the first set of numbers match to a distant hanging placard. Section and then...booth? I'll find out.

"You have no idea," he says, and slouches back down, laptop stowed away, to attend to the Balseraph waiting impatiently at the front of the line. "Next!"

But when I glance back over my shoulder, ten steps away, that Lilim is watching me. He looks away as soon as I've caught him at it.

I don't like this at all, and I keep _saying_ that, but what choice do I have?

The big numbered signs overhead get me to the indicated area in the hall, and I find myself at a section that's about as close to subdued as I've seen in here yet. The Lilim at these booths look more like they want to do your accounting than drag you to bed, and there's a roped-off section of couches where one Lilim is having an intense, low-voiced discussion with a half dozen demons about the nature of fate. Or more likely, the nature of Fate. Not all the booths have their numbers listed prominently, so it takes me a bit work out that the second half of my address isn't on a booth at all. It's marking out an elevator set into the wall, with a massive Djinn stationed beside it. She looks like a kangaroo got into a teleporter accident with a hedgehog, and wears a thick Geas band around her neck. Also, a big green bow, with ribbons trailing down across her shoulder. She's not the oddest thing I've seen yet in Shal-Mari, but she's trying.

I hold up the brochure like a shield when I approach her, and make sure to keep all my hands in view and make no sudden movements. "The information booth said I should go here?"

"Yeah, we're expecting you," the Djinn says, and gives me a slow look up and down. "Can't be too many Calabim coming here for a chat. Go ahead and get inside, and the elevator will take you up." She thumps a button with a spiny elbow, and the elevator doors open. "Might take a while. Security checks."

I step up to the door of the elevator. The space inside is surrounded with dark mirrors reflecting my image back at me. I could almost forget what I look like in Hell, without this kind of reminder. There aren't any controls inside. "And it's definitely not going to explode, or drop me into the basement, or trap me in there forever?"

"Kid, it's VapuTech. You never know. But this thing's been running for sixty years since the last update, and we've only ever lost one passenger."

"What happened to them?"

The Djinn shrugs expressively.

I step inside, and try to project easy confidence, at least until the doors close.

The elevator shivers around me, in what seems to be more of a "going up to another floor" manner than a "going to explode any minute now" manner. I slouch back against a mirrored wall, and try not to look at myself. Except there's nothing else to see in here. Even the floor's mirrored, my own face staring back at me, and the reflection of the mirror in the ceiling beyond that.

My wings keep twitching about. I don't know what to do with them, and I don't know what the point of them is, except to make it clear I'm not some human. With ragged edges like these, I wouldn't be able to use them for any sort of flight even if Hell turned the gravity down and then pretended it believed in aerodynamics. Of course, they couldn't work any worse than trying to lift a Balseraph on their wings, which are damn pretty but not very practical for picking up a snake of that size.

I have never been one to try to change what I am. Other people change me, and I fight back as best I can, but I have never, ever wanted to stop being myself. Calabite is as Calabite does, and I enjoy making things explode with my mind. Wouldn't trade it for the world. But with my one truest form reflecting back and forth into infinity on all sides of this mirror box, I can't help but feel there's something fundamentally broken about me. Not just the Discord that none of us Calabim can help having, but the whole gig. We're broken so that we can break things, and days like this I start to get what draws people to work for a place like Fate--other than the library cards--because, really, why fight it? It's always easier to break things than build them, and my entire nature is, ha, built around doing exactly that.

In my reflection, I'm clenching my fists. I open my hands, and draw in a deep breath. Friendly neighborhood Calabite is here to make a fair deal for information. Let's not spook anyone in hostile territory into tossing me out the worse for wear, because I cannot afford to have this day get any worse.

The doors open at last. I've never had an elevator ride so long as that in my life, and I wonder how much of it's deliberate stalling to unsettle people before they step out to deal with...whoever I'm dealing with. What's outside of the elevator now is a long corridor with numbered doors on all sides, and mostly damned souls running around with stacks of file folders and papers. A few Lilim among them, and I spot one tiny Habbalite that's a brisk tattoo-scrubbing away from looking like a human itself, but it's one of the damned that bows to me just outside the elevator. "This way, please," she says, and waits to be sure she has my attention before leading me down the corridor.

Down the very long corridor. We must've crossed a quarter the length of that entire hall on the first floor before she stops at a door. She raps on it briskly, listens for I don't know what--no answer I can hear--and then opens it for me. "Inside, please."

I wonder what horrible thing this woman did on the corporeal to be stuck in Hell forever, playing doorkeeper to Lilim. Probably nothing as wicked as I've done.

Past the door is an office like my professors had back in college, if bigger than they usually got and a bit tidier. The Lilim barely needs to point at the chair waiting for me before I sit in it, and I'm already having flashbacks about asking for deadline extensions and trying to wheedle out some help to cover the fact that a few years in Sheol's classrooms isn't exactly the same as a formal high school education. She's dressed to lecture a classroom of sophomores on Women's Eighteenth Century Lit, and for a moment the expression she gives me says that I've already missed a paper deadline.

But the moment passes, and she says, "What do you Need?" Purely professional.

"I need to find someone. A Djinn. He was taken--" I shut up when she holds up her hand.

"No," she says. "Not that information. Duilio already sent it along, and we will get to that shortly. First, we will discuss what you Need to know, whether or not you were aware of it."

I had better choose my words carefully, because I suspect that if I don't take this Lilim's help, I'm not going to find a lot of other options available to me. "I only budgeted so much for this expedition. I'm not sure I can afford to fill my unconscious needs as well as my conscious ones today." That was polite enough. I think. None of my social skills work very well around here; I can't play charming or innocent in this body.

"You can afford this," she says. "I will ask you a few questions, and you will answer them, and in this way, we will do business. You will owe nothing otherwise for my fulfillment of this Need you were not aware of, so I swear. If you don't wish to answer my questions, then we will renegotiate. Do we have a deal?"

"Deal," I say, and she dips her head in a tiny nod like I said something important. "What can I help you with?"

"Tell me, Leo," she says, and I still don't like the way she says my name when I haven't given it to anyone since I reached this city, "have you ever noticed a tendency in yourself to take promises too seriously? By the standards of those demons who are not Lilim. Taking it personally when people don't follow through on their half of a bargain. Getting, mm, itchy and angry when your choices are constrained and your hand is forced, but considering the same actions reasonable if you negotiated terms first."

I can't tell where she's going with this, and I don't like it. "Who wouldn't?"

"Many demons," she said. "They break their promises and expect the same. They force others to obey them without recompense, and expect the same. They are not Free, and they never had a choice to be anything but slaves. We are different."

"And by 'we', you mean Lilim."

She watches me steadily. "Among others."

"Yes," I say, because, what, I'm going to deny this now. "Next question?"

"What happened when you were first made?"

I did not expect that. It's not a question I ever expected anyone to ask, and no one ever has before, and why would anyone care? It's not even that it's personal, because demons love to get in some personal dig when they can. The knife slides deeper when you know where the armor plating is cracked. It's just not relevant. "I was there, standing in front of my Prince. Presumably he pulled my Forces together."

"And then?"

"And then he handed me over to a Habbalite who needed an assistant. Is there a point to this?" That was not a polite question. I wrap my hands around the chair's arms, where I'm not likely to do damage to much of anything.

"Yes," she says. "Sit quietly, and let me tell you a story."

And I thought this day couldn't get any stranger.

She rests her hands on the desk, fingers spread, in a way that reminds me uncomfortably of what Penny does when he's pulling together something in his mind in a way that he can speak it as truth but not give away the information he'd rather keep back. "There was a Lilim," she says, "a Sister of mine, who worked for me for decades. Good with paperwork. His name was Levon, and he was...how shall we put it. Sharp enough to cut himself. He carried files and sorted information and did his data analysis, and oh, how bored he was, knowing that this would never get him to the marvelous land of the corporeal plane."

I've heard that name before. Not in a long time. This had better not be going where I think it is, because I can't be held responsible for what happened before I was created. It wasn't my fault, and when has it ever mattered whose fault it really is? But I look attentive like a good little Calabite, and pretend I haven't twigged to a thing.

"He made a deal," she says. "With a Habbalite of Fire, who swore she would give him everything he wanted if he'd come serve her." She sniffs, and toys with a pen on her desk. "He should have asked me to look over the contract. There are ways to fool anyone, and he sold himself into a bad bargain. His own fault, really. A Sister has to look out for herself. When he realized it..." She shrugs one shoulder. "He tried to run. I don't know where. Back to beg Mother for help, Renegade across the corporeal plane, back to me for favors... Maybe he was stupid enough to try to meet with angels. The world may never know, as his master certainly found out. He was disassembled. I imagine there was some interim stage, as Habbalah have their ways of expressing disappointment, but the details never reached me."

"I don't see what this has to do with me," I say. It doesn't. It has nothing to do with me.

"When the Prince of Fire was done pulling my Sister's Forces apart," she says, "instead of letting them spin free, he knotted them back together again, and made someone in his own image." She points to me with one elegant finger. "You."

"And here I am, distinctly not a Lilim. Because it doesn't work that way." I don't know what this means. Maybe it means nothing, except if it means nothing, why would she tell me?

"No," she says. "It does not. However, you are a...nephew, of sorts." She eyes me, and I eye her right back. From what I know of Lilim, family feeling gets you nothing. "Debts are owed, which you must see through."

"While I'm all for discovering the family I never knew I had," I say, "I'm pretty sure that I can't be held responsible for the debts of my..." I don't think there's a word for this relationship, even in Helltongue, if it is a relationship at all. "...your Sister whose Forces were recycled into me. I'm certainly not responsible for her--for his stupidity in getting caught trying to run away."

"The disassembly is beside the point." She flicks a hand gesture of dismissal so sharp that I know as solid as any other fact that she does care about that, whatever she's saying to me. "He signed the contract, and took service to a Prince. He attempted to break the contract, and penalties were imposed. It was his Prince's right and privilege to destroy him. However, the re-use of those Forces was..." She's the one searching for a word now, and I'm not about to suggest one. "Obscene," she concludes. "It was not merely _theft_ , but a betrayal of the only thing Free Lilim truly own. We pay for our own Forces, and they are ours."

I wonder how far I could get before the Lilim in here caught up with me? And whether she's able to read in my eyes how much I want out of here. Not buying those sunglasses might've been a bad choice after all. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You owe him," she says.

"But he's _dead_."

"Yes," she says dryly, "that was rather the point of this story. "You owe him revenge. Not on that Prince, who may do as he pleases with his Servitors, but on the Habbalite who wanted to possess my Sister even after death, and was given this gift. You will bring about some suitable form of revenge on that Habbalite."

The arm of my chair snaps off under my grip. We both look at that for a moment, and I'm not sure which of us is more surprised. "Sorry," I say. "Calabite." I set the broken piece down in front of her, neatly placed and lined up with the edge of the desk. Just like my first supervisor always liked things. "I'm all for horrible things happening to that Habbalite, but point the first, I'm a little busy this week. Point the second, she's a Captain of the Eternal Fire, which is a little beyond my capabilities. Point the third, seeing as I don't work for Fire anymore, it would be tricky to get revenge on someone who hardly ever leaves Sheol. Could we maybe renegotiate this whole revenge thing? Or postpone it?"

"Your file says that you're creative about getting revenge on those more powerful than you--"

"I have a _file_?"

"Who doesn't?" The Lilim shrugs one shoulder. "Oh, don't give me that look, child. It was a rhetorical question. Anyone who matters has a file, the occasional misplaced Servitor of Secrets aside."

"I knew the Game kept files," I say, still trying to process this information. It's been a very trying morning. Afternoon? Evening? How can I even tell, in this place? "I wasn't aware Freedom had this much interest in paperwork."

"Information is one type of power," says the Lilim. "There is no Freedom without the power to maintain it. We do try to maintain a diverse portfolio around here. Now. You are wondering how I intend to enforce this task I mean to set to you, and the answer is simple. I will give you enough information to let you retrieve your missing partner."

I'm learning to pay close attention to the words that Lilim choose to use. It's almost like talking with Seraphim, that way. "That doesn't sound like 'I'll tell you where your missing partner is.'"

"Because I won't. I don't know. Yet. However, I know people who will offer you help, and if you are clever enough to use this information wisely, you will retrieve him."

"What if I'm not clever enough?"

"Then you are not the true child of my dead Sister," the Lilim says, "and you will owe me nothing." She spreads her hands across the desk. "If you retrieve your partner, and return to Stygia with him, then you will owe me. You will carry out the necessary revenge on that Habbalite."

"I can't." I would take this bargain in a heartbeat if I thought I could live through it. Maybe even if I thought there was just a good chance of living through it, because I need Zhune back, I need him like I need my eyes and hands. Stygia isn't my home, it's his, and Theft isn't my friend when he's not with me. "I'm Bound to whatever vessel I'm in, so I couldn't even get back to Sheol, and even if--" I shut up when she gives me that look professors used to. The one that says, your paper is overdue, and your excuses aren't helping any.

"Some details will be managed," she says. "You will find a way. If you can get your partner back, you can get this done as well. Besides, I don't intend to give you a tight deadline."

"How much time will I have?"

"If you're taking too long," she says, "I'll let you know." And that does sound like a threat, if one of the more polite ones I've heard. Which is saying something, come to think of it; I've been threatened by all sorts of people in my life.

She waits a moment, as if maybe I have something to say to all this, but I don't. There's nothing to say. I hate having my back up against the wall, and I'm prone to burning the wall in question to the ground when someone tries that, but she's offering me something, as much as she's pinned me down into a no-escape situation. I came in here willing to pay just about anything for the help I need.

"Do we have a deal?" she asks at last.

"Is your information really going to be enough for me to work with?"

"It would have been for Levon," she says. "Are we agreed?"

"Sure," I say. There are probably horrible catches and loopholes to this. Maybe it stands to reason that I was made out of someone who wasn't very good at finding them before he signed on the dotted line. "It's a deal."


	8. A Flashback, Taking Place Three Thousand And Seven Hundred Years Ago (Give Or Take A Few Decades)

"I don't like it," Zhune said.

"That's because it's your job not to like it." The Lilim sat cross-legged on the stump of a tree destroyed by lightning, slate balanced over one knee. What she wrote there in chalk would appear on its counterpart back in their office. What she wrote there was none of Zhune's business, as he would file his own report, his own impressions.

She had sharper eyes. But he was the one who saw lurking danger.

"Four to one, a Tether of Waters is waiting down at that harbor," Zhune said. "Tell me I'm wrong." He folded his arms, and watched the walls of the city creep into sight as the sun rose. A red sunrise spread bloody fingers into the sky, as if some vast and terrifying Archangel dragged itself up from the depths.

"If we knew," said the Lilim, "what would it change? We have a target. We have instructions."

"It would change tactics." Zhune sniffed the air, and checked behind them. "Let's take it slow."

"Not so slow that our target can board a ship before we find her." The Lilim set the slate down by her pack. Chalk smudged her brown fingers with white, caught beneath her fingernails and left one perfect streak across the edge of the veil she had taken off. The better to watch the sunrise. "We'll be careful."

"Four to one," Zhune said. "Or five to one." He sank his mind into the knowing, and knew she was there beside him. Safe, still, singular. "If she knows there's a Tether here, and ran for that, not only for transportation--"

"--then we will deal with that when we get there," the Lilim said, "in our usual style. We have survived Wind and Fire and Stone, and there is no reason to fear Waters more than the others."

Zhune huffed out a breath. All the sky was streaked with red, and all it meant was that daylight was gaining on them, and they had best get moving. It was a danger, to see too much in too little detail. "I will be glad when this one is over. Most targets move, but this one flees and crosses her tracks like an angel of the Wind. This could be a trap, if she found them before we heard. She could already be a Wheel."

"Or she could be a Calabite who knows the game is on her track, and who runs like she fears the weight of the law. As well she ought." The Lilim slipped to her feet, and lifted her veil high in one hand like a flag. It caught the morning breeze, flicking wildly against her grasp. "The wind's in our favor, my dear hound. And I've completed my case notes for the day. Shall we be off?"

"Watch your back," Zhune said. He offered her a hand in setting her clothing back in order as the humans of this place preferred it, and she accepted. The wisdom of their Prince set them out in twos because no man alone, no matter his Band, could see in every direction.

"That's your job," said the Lilim. She smiled once at him before the veil covered her face. "As I watch yours. Onward?"

"So let it be spoken," said Zhune.

"So let it be done."

They walked toward the city shoulder-to-shoulder, the cries of gulls rising overhead.


	9. An Interlude, In Which Silence Is Optional

Zhune closed his eyes, all of them, and ignored what the Habbalite was saying. A personal enemy. How tedious. How wearisome, the way his body ached with weights, some of them literal and some of them merely the effects of the artifact bound to his limbs. How predictable.

He had spit out its hand, and could still taste it within one of his mouths. Gluttony, then. That would explain the location. He had too many old friends and allies in Lust and Freedom for either of those to resort to such measures, even after his partner had destroyed one of those boltholes. (With another partner, he might have been upset about that. But every partner had a buy-in, and the current partner's buy-in was acceptable. Even if it did wreak havoc now and again in his carefully laid chains of resources.) Dark Humor... Well, now, he probably had a few enemies in Dark Humor, even if he couldn't come up with any names. Dark Humor would have done this with more style. More mockery.

That was the problem with demons of Gluttony. They took things too personally, invested too much in the wanting. All this emphasis on the external, wanting and craving and then the whining if others didn't exhibit enough passions directed outward. Idiots. He could almost feel Habbalite himself, in his scorn for such things. Theft took and possessed, and was not possessed or taken. His needs were few, simple, internal.

Service to his Prince. A job well done. A little time to pursue personal pleasures. Control of his attuned.

How was this measuring up? No service to his Prince, while bound and lectured. No jobs completed, under the same condition. Personal pleasures could wait: there was no hurry for them. The corporeal remained, and there was nothing he wanted there that could run so fast or far that he could not catch it again at his leisure.

He searched for knowledge of his attuned.

Too fucking close.

The Habbalite was saying something, and Zhune pushed away any consciousness of that to focus inward. Deep inside himself, where attunements waited for his attention, as much a part of him as fur and claws and heart. More a part of him, because he took that connection with him everywhere.

Too close, and getting closer, though not very fast. Bad. Idiot kid, didn't he know it was his job to run away? Let the one who could handle a little trouble and pain take the shots, and circle around behind to light the fuse. Surely Leo knew that this situation was beyond him. He'd never displayed a reckless disregard for self-preservation before, except when seeking revenge.

Unless the kid thought he was seeking revenge, which made this...bad. Yes. Zhune flexed against his bonds, and was annoyed to realize that this had disrupted that flow of talk above him. As if the Habbalite thought he'd scored a point. Prompted a reaction. Ha. As if.

Or had it found his attuned? No secret who that was, not by now, not for some time now, but why would it bother? He was no Cherub. Hurting his attuned couldn't do a thing to him, was never important enough to use as leverage on a Djinn. Maybe worth it to grab and hide one, when luring him into a trap, but oh, he would have seen that one coming. Spend a few centuries chasing other demons, a few centuries fleeing them, and every trick was an old one.

Besides, he was right here. No need for luring. No point in bringing in complications. Couldn't be the Habbalite's doing. If it was the one he thought--and he wasn't sure, didn't care enough to be sure--then it would know that never would have worked with the last partner. Clear enough from the way he'd left the Impudite in Hell, hadn't gone begging his Prince for a repair job on that.

He'd been getting bored with that one. All style, no substance. Reversing that problem had seemed a bad idea when his Prince assigned the kid to him, Zhune liked a little style, but he was working on it. Clear-eyed focus on the job was a good change of pace.

His attuned was getting further away again. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe he was misreading, so near the Stygia border that it felt like something. No matter. He'd find his way out of this setup with the Habbalite, or he wouldn't. Not anyone else's problem.

If only the demon would _shut up_.


	10. In Which What The Hell, Shal-Mari, Seriously, What The Hell

In my entire eight hours of Shal-Mari experience so far, I've decided that you can't tell with most demons who they serve, unless they're making a show of it. An Impudite of Lust dresses a lot like a visiting Impudite of the Media, Lilim of Gluttony and Lilim of Freedom hang out and chat together, and Dark Humor can look like absolutely everyone, because how would they screw you over if you saw them coming? But the bars and brothels, those are little more territorial. Read the graffiti some demonling just scrawled across the front steps, and you get the idea that maybe this brothel is looking at sex as something to pursue to exhaustion because you want it all, while that restaurant next to it is enjoying the erotic potential in food. The pawn shop with a grimy sign calling itself The Open Cage has an obvious affiliation. The signs are all _there_ , even if I don't know how to read most of them yet.

The address that Lilim gave me is to an establishment I can't exactly put a name to--I'd call it a coffee shop, if I thought I could get a beverage anywhere inside this place--that, to the best of my scanty local knowledge, caters to Servitors of Dark Humor. It's no one detail that tells me this. It's the combination of the expressions on the demons inside, the way certain people in the crowd outside avoid the entrance. The channels chosen on the televisions, the movie posters on the walls (much newer than that first bar's), the snickering from a crowd of Shedim and Impudites in one corner. Whole lot of Shedim in here, really, and not a lot of Calabim.

But no one hassles me as I dodge between pillars and tables to track down the table in the back left corner, just like the Lilim told me to. The table's big enough for eight people about my size, surrounded on three sides by dirty upholstered booth seating. A single large Shedite slumps across the table. It might be staring at one of the televisions, but with Shedim, it's always hard to tell.

I sit down at the same booth, and wait.

After somewhere near ten minutes, when it becomes clear that I'm not going anywhere, the Shedite heaves a sigh that makes its whole body wobble like kicked jello. "I know you," it says.

"What, really?"

"Yes," it says. It extends a tentacle across the table towards me, in what I think is sort of an offer of a handshake. It's not a fast enough move to be an attack. "You can call me Eddie. You, of course, are Leo. Nice work with those law offices, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing."

And why, exactly, did the Lilim tell me talk to this thing? I thought Lilim hated Shedim. Maybe when you're in the business of information brokerage, you don't have the luxury of personal squeamishness. "No idea what you're talking about."

"No, of course not," the Shedite says, and sighs again. It retracts its tentacle. "What was that motto for Theft? 'I wasn't there, I didn't do it, you can't prove anything.' Something like that."

"Generally," I say, "we prefer to avoid needing to give excuses in the first place. How do you know my name?"

"I'm the vice president of your fan club," says the Shedite, and punctuates that statement with another sigh. I'm no longer sure if it's depressed or suffering from some kind of respiratory problem. "It's my job to keep the table occupied for the meetings."

"What."

"What?"

I blink a few times, and try to figure out if I've just suffered some kind of psychotic break. If such a thing could happen to a demon, it would probably be in Shal-Mari. "You're the vice-president of what?"

"Your fan club."

"No," I say, because I think the only thing that can save me now is complete denial. "No such thing. This is the setup for a joke, right? Something about a Calabite walking into a bar. You're Dark Humor, aren't you?"

"To approximately the same degree you're Theft." The Shedite offers a tentacle again while I process the potential layers of meaning in that statement. "Let's try this again. My name is more or less Eddie, and your name is almost certainly Leo, and I was elected vice president of your fan club by the other members because they all had better things to do than keep the table open."

I take the tentacle, because there is part of my brain that is blinking 12:00 and I have to do something until it catches up. This can't be a psychotic break. Hallucinations brought on by stress would make more sense than that. "Pleased to meet you. Assuming that you're telling the truth, which I'm not really assuming right now, why do I have a fan club?"

"It began," Eddie says, "when you rescued a Horror from a corporeal prison of the Game. She is a young woman of strong opinions." That's not a way I've heard a Habbalite described before. "It continued when she was able to connect your image in the video of that Cherub incident with the person who had rescued her--"

"Wait," I say. "Back up. Video?"

"I don't have it on hand," the Shedite says. "If you wanted to come back to my place, I could put the tape on television."

"Tape? Like...VCRs?" No, this is not the time to contemplate the uneven distribution of technology within Hell. "What is on the video, and _why does this exist_?"

Eddie sighs before speaking, this time. Its innards wash gently over the edge of the table every time it does that. "When one of the more photogenic Princes of Hell decides to walk down a street with a Cherub of Judgment--it was Judgment, wasn't it? reports are mixed--as I was saying, with a Cherub of Judgment on a leash, then there will be _someone_ recording the event, and naturally those walking near the Prince will also be in the recording. There are a few clips from within two different bars, but I'm afraid no one yet has stepped forward with video of how that ended. Speculation runs rampant."

I need to learn a lot more inventive phrases for cursing in Helltongue, because I'm not saying anything at all.

"What did happen?" Eddie asks.

"What?"

"With the Cherub of Judgment. What did that Prince do with her?"

"Something funny," I say, and slump back in the booth, which pinches my wings up against the back wall but I don't _care_. "I'd think that Dark Humor would have enough wacky fun created by its own Servitors without looking to admire anyone else's."

"We do," Eddie says. "Which is why your fan club has five members, and not five hundred. However, there is always some cachet to having identified a bright new star before they were popular."

"If you're about to tell me that my fans are all hipsters," I say, "please, please stop."

A wave ripples through the Shedite's body. I think that was a shrug. "Then I won't tell you. How can I help you?"

"What are the chances that if I ask you for help, it's going to turn into a hilarious joke at my expense?"

Several of Eddie's eyes swim up through its body to peer at me. "It would depend," it says, after a painfully long pause, "on what exactly happened."

"You seem to have it on video--"

"In the end," it says. "What did the Prince do that Cherub?"

In Stygia, I would be worried about people trying to overhear. It's a place full of secrets, and a bad place to try to keep them. Here, I...don't know. Can't find it in myself to care too much. "He sent her back home. A gift-wrapped present to a Tether of the Sword, after fucking with her head for a while. He thought it would be _funny_. So now what are the chances?"

"Low," says the Shedite. It condenses in on itself, taking up less space and turning darker as its translucent parts sink in. "Do you want me to play a joke on someone? I'm not very good at it."

The Lilim sent me to this demon for a reason. The Lilim _wants_ me to succeed, if not quite enough to get any evidence of her involvement into the process. She wants me to...prove myself. I hate tests, but I'm _used_ to tests. The Habbalah loved them, especially the types with trick questions. She wants me to take this bizarre little scrap of information and show her that I'm the sort of person who can take down a Captain with nothing but a clever plan.

I can do that. All I need to do is stop fretting and start thinking like my back's to the wall and there's a Mercurian of War aiming a pistol at my head. I've been in worse situations than this, with less help, and...oh. Oh. She works for _Freedom_ , and there are things in those files that I bet even the Game doesn't know as much about.

"Yeah, probably," I say. "I guess it depends on how you feel about the target. Eddie, since you're in my fan club and all, can I ask you a personal question?"

Its many eyes look dubious, but it says, "You can always ask."

"What made you Fall?"

"No one asked me that," Eddie says, with exquisite care in its choice of words, and I think it's shivering, "in a very long time. Why are you asking?"

"Because you're not very good at being a Shedite," I say. "You're all wrong for it. Either that or you're an excellent actor, but that raises other weirder questions, not even getting into why you'd bother. So. You're terrible at being a Shedite. Which means you didn't fledge that way, or you'd be more ready to do the job. And you weren't created for it, or you wouldn't be hanging out here with nothing better to do. Princes don't _make_ demons and then toss them into some back corner to rot. It's not practical, and I don't think it's even funny enough for Kobal to bother with it, either. That leaves one route to your Band."

"Everyone died," Eddie says. "Is that answer enough? A ship full of diseased men touched down half a continent away, and everyone _died_. I haven't met anyone who speaks that language in four hundred years. No one remembers the name of the city where I worked, much less the families I watched. Their poetry and songs are gone. All the continuity of culture that passes on when individuals die, it was broken and discarded and forgotten. What would you have done?"

"Killed everyone responsible," I say, "and let the stockyards sort them out."

"Ah," Eddie says. "Calabite."

"Yes, well."

We stare at each other for a bit, and then try staring somewhere else. The television near us is showing some sort of porn channel. We end up staring at each other again.

"Look," I say, "I want your help. I need help from someone local, and as hilarious as this is even to contemplate, you're probably my best chance at getting reliable backup. What can I offer you to make it worth your while?"

"If you're asking a Shedite of Dark Humor for assistance in anything other than a bad joke," Eddie says, "you must be truly desperate."

"I said that, didn't I?"

Eddie pushes forward a little across the table. "I used to work for Trade," it says. "You know that I don't know. I'm obligated to play cruel jokes on people. If I should ever go to the corporeal, God forbid, I would be obliged to corrupt any human whose body I occupied for an instant. I am not, however, obliged to keep my promises."

"Yeah," I say, "but you're not Factions. I have pretty low standards."

"Very well," Eddie says, and sighs. "You'll probably regret this."


	11. An Interlude, In Which Logistics Are Discussed

Unathi lounged in a comfortable chair its followers had dragged into the basement room, feet propped on a coffee table, and considered the Djinn. The difficulty with vengeance on the Stalkers was that so many of them were adept at feigning apathy, they began to believe the lie themselves.

Eventually, even a Djinn would admit otherwise. Any sort of internal shift against the nature of a given Band could be forced with care and time. Balseraphs would tell the truth, Impudites destroy their own pets, Calabim give up on attempting destruction... That was where character growth lay for demons. Pushing them to the edges of where their natural inclinations took them, until they stopped being person-shaped forms and turned into actual people.

Revenge was much like parenting, in some ways. One began with an unpleasant, awkwardly shaped lump of material that wanted to continue being itself, and one pressured it into becoming something more real. The difference was in what Unathi had left on its hands at the end of the process.

It had a pair of gloves from the last Djinn it had found revenge on stored away in a wardrobe drawer. That one's hide had been smoother than any visible patch of this one. Unathi suspected it would be lucky to get so much as a festive scarf for one of its followers off the Magpie on the floor.

One of the followers it had just begun to consider--there were several instructive lessons to be made from the fate of the ones left behind in Stygia, the next time its schedule allowed for classroom exercises--tapped on the door to the basement room, then oozed inside. "The owner wants to talk to you, Unathi."

It gave up on contemplating the inert Stalker. A walk might clear its head, and give it some more ideas to work with. "Then wait here and keep watch, Secundum."

The Shedite slipped further inside, and took up a position beneath the coffee table, rumbling quietly to itself. "So Prima is really gone?"

"Quite," Unathi said. It picked up a few of the books that had proven less useful than hoped, to return to the library above. "Your survival skills to date have been top-notch, though I begin to wonder about your enthusiasm."

"I always thought of myself as more the shadowy type," Secundum said from under the table. It dangled an eyeball on a stalk upward to maintain eye contact. "Practicing for subtlety on the corporeal and so forth. But I could try to be more enthusiastic, even if I don't see how to watch this thing enthusiastically. Are we sure it's not dead?"

"We're quite sure," Unathi said. "Don't let him become so in my absence, or I'll be put out. I want some return on my investment."

"I'll do my best."

That was all it asked of people. To do their best. Unathi climbed the stairs to the Impudite's office--it had not trusted VapuTech when that Prince was new, and had no intention of starting now--and wondered if it was too optimistic. It had expected some attrition in retrieving the Djinn from Stygia, even among its core followers. However, it had not expected quite this level of loss. From five down to two... People would notice. It needed to fill out the ranks again before its next audience with someone of note.

The Impudite was sorting through paperwork when it arrived at her office. "I need some sort of time estimate," she said, with barely a glance up for its entrance. "You can have use of that room for the next three years for all I care, I'm not short on space, but I'm going to need those shackles back the instant you're done with them. They're my best set, and I have client requests to fill."

"The Djinn only woke up this morning," Unathi said. "He won't take dissonance for another two days. I may be at this some time." It was holding out hope, though not much, for one of the more colorful Discords; scheduling suggested it wouldn't have time to prompt more than two or three conversions of dissonance before it had to conclude the project.

"Look," said the Impudite wearily, setting a pen down amidst paperwork, "you know that you can count on me for help when you need it. Always have, always will. But I have a business to run, and you're using the best shackles I own. Some other people like to bring in enemies--some people who _pay_ for the privilege--and some of those enemies aren't little seven-Force demons I can keep under control with rope and baling wire. I'm going to have to nail someone's wings to the wall to keep everyone happy."

"I'll make it up to you," Unathi said. "What do you need?"

"I'm going to need a replacement Calabite, if tonight's client shows," the Impudite said. She stretched her arms out, and rolled her neck about. "Bless it, when we did in--you know who, and I took over this place, I never realized there'd be so little time for fun, and so much administrative work. So much kissing up to rich clients who keep making dramatic requests, then canceling at the last minute."

"I might be able to find you a Destroyer," Unathi said. It set the books down on her desk. "I'd like at least nine days. Some higher multiple of nine would be preferable."

"You should try to make enemies in Dark Humor," the Impudite said dryly. "You'd finish faster. How about the one following you around? He'd do as a replacement, and you said he was a Force down anyway, so he's not much use to you."

"That one's not disposable."

"You say that now, but if something better caught your eye..." The Impudite glanced over the books. "When I have a minute, I'll pick out some classics for you. Those new releases are all hype and specialized equipment. Not worth the effort it takes to implement, though I've had to stock some of the equipment for--well, you know how Media and Tech are about novelty. How about if we swap out the shackles you're using for a set that's nearly as good? Cheap ones I have in spades, and a few that are more mid-range. The upper end of those should suffice."

Unathi reminded itself of the values of patience. The Impudite had always given it the help she could, right up to the edge of what her duties allowed. Sending her business into failure would surely be a contravention of those duties. "I don't believe that would be wise," it said. "The Djinn already broke through the current set once. Since that must've been all his Essence, I doubt he'll manage that a second time. However, using anything weaker would be..." He waved a hand expressively.

"Point taken," the Impudite said, and grimaced. "Not what I want rampaging through the building. Do you need me to post security down there?"

"No, it's under control." Unathi wandered the office, considering various decorations on the walls. It still liked the portrait of the Impudite, even if she'd hung it below the television. That was the product of one of its followers from many years ago, now a favored Servitor roaming some corporeal nation with her teeth dug into a hundred metaphorical pies. It liked even better the discreet glass case containing a pair of small horns. "I'll try to find you a Calabite. Not my own. Conversely, if you have any products that are no longer suitable to your purposes, but still alive, I may be able to make use of them. I don't mind training them on the job."

"I'm not rolling in spares," the Impudite said. She smiled wryly, and blew him a kiss across her fingertips. "Give me five minutes, and I'll go to the reading room with you to help you pick out some better ideas. That'll make up for some of the rush. I hate to step on your toes when you're having fun."


	12. In Which Things Go Suspiciously Well

We can hear the Habbie singing before she appears. "Mister Hades is a mean old boss, with a silver whistle and a golden scale..." She appears arm-in-arm with an Impudite who's dressed for Korean fashion. Trailing behind her are another Habbalite, his face so mutilated it's just eyes and a mouth slit looking out from a mass of scars, and a Calabite who's dripping with...I don't know what, I don't want to know what.

All four of them park themselves around the table where they can look at me, ignoring Eddie to such an extent that the Calabite's sitting on three of its tentacles. I can't tell if Eddie doesn't mind, or is too depressed to complain.

"Wow," says the Habbalite in front, propping her chin in her hands. She looks nothing like she did on the corporeal, except maybe in the shifty way she sits. Her hands still shake a little; I'm betting not all the Discord she picked up while locked in that room got stripped off her. Maybe none at all. She's one of the Habbalah that goes in for tattoos more than scars and piercings, and there's not a square inch of skin I can see on her that's not covered in twisting patterns. Thorns and barbed wire, mostly, though in some places they're winding through the eyes and mouths of stylized laughing masks. "Wow," she repeats, when that doesn't get an immediate response. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"The same," I say, because I'm going to have to play nice enough with these kids to get some use out of them. But not so nice that they take me for a fool and try to do something hilarious to me. "Isn't it lucky for you that I'm in a good mood today?" I smile sharply, all teeth, and in my true form my teeth are much sharper. "Come on, Elektra. Introduce me to your friends."

She points to the Impudite, other Habbalite, and then Calabite in turn. "Myeong, Haneul, and Chelp. They've all been just _dying_ to meet you." I think that's the hierarchy in this group laid out right there. Who needs Mercurians? "The message said you wanted to talk to us. You're planning something, right? Something fun?"

They stare at me like I'm going to spout words of wisdom, or juggle a handful of demonlings. "Yeah," I say. "That's pretty much it. I could manage on my own, but it'll be more entertaining if I can outsource some of the details. Anyone in?"

"I just wanted to say I loved that bit with the building, where it exploded," the Calabite says in a rush--Chelp, right, she would be the one with the stupid name. She leans over the table, dripping whatever that is on the plastic tablecloth. "I want to do that sort of thing some day too. Especially against...them."

"If you mean the Game," I say, "that's off the table today. And no offense, but I don't think I'd go running up against them with people I just met at my back. A little too much chance for disaster. Though if you really feel up to breaking into Hades, I could give you a shopping list."

"Maybe not today," Elektra says. Despite the shaking hands, she's a lot smoother here than she was when I last saw her. Being on your home turf, and not wondering if you're about to be tortured and killed by your enemies, probably helps a lot with that. "Is it some sort of grand joke?"

"It's grand," I say, "but I don't really do jokes. Maybe you'd find it funny. Definitely some people will be very unhappy when it's done." I let them think that over for just a few seconds before I continue. "So are you in, or out? I'm not going to sit here and talk about the whole setup before I've got some buy-in."

"It depends on what you're doing," says the Impudite. Myeong, with the enormous glossy sunglasses. "We're, you know, fans and everything, but that's awfully vague."

Hang out with Factions long enough, and you start to think like them. Right now I'm thinking that no one at the table is such a big fan of mine that they're sold on my unexplained (and admittedly deeply improvisational) plan, so maybe they need something else to reject that pushes them closer to what I want. And with two Habbalah to play with... I could always learn to like working with this Band, so long as I got to be in charge.

"Look," I say, friendly and frank, "Myeong--that was the name, right? It's okay. This is being sprung on you suddenly, and I totally get it if you're not up to extracurricular activities on a day when you were planning on doing...whatever you do all day instead. Especially with your Band, it makes sense that you couldn't just sign up for a new project sight unseen. People might get hurt. If you want to back out now, really, I'm not going to hold it against you."

"I'm not--" She stops, and looks at the two Habbalah. Elektra's got this expression of _I'm not with her_ on her face already, and Haneul's turning away from her a little. "I'm not scared, I'm just bored," the Impudite insists. "This is ridiculous. The whole fan club thing is just a _joke_ , not something anyone's supposed to take seriously. It's funny. It's not a job."

"Of course not," I say gently. "It's fine. You want to head out now? Since you're bored and all? No one's going to mind."

Myeong shoves back out of her seat, fists clenching. "This is stupid. I'm going to go do something more interesting."

"I said that's fine." I slouch back, resting my head and horns against the wall of the booth. "Look, Myeong. You can do whatever you want. Just remember that I know what you're called, and what you look like, and--hey, Eddie, do you know where she lives?"

Eddie makes a wave-motion inside its body that's something like a nod.

"Right," I conclude. "And where you live." I smile prettily at her. "Nice meeting you, Myeong. If you ever visit Stygia, ask around, and maybe we can meet up again."

She stalks out of the bar like she doesn't care who's watching. Like. Ha. I think everyone one of us here knows how much she cares.

Chelp stops watching the Impudite, and turns back to me. "How do you do it? When you smile like that, it's all...threatening. When I smile like that, it's..." She waves her hands, scattering droplets of liquid. "People think I'm trying not to get hurt. What gets you that effect?"

"Confidence," I say. "And a lot of practice." I survey the three kids left at the table. (I'm still not sure where Eddie counts in any of this.) "Anyone else think it's a bad idea to agree to help me, without any details? Because I can tell you this right up front: it's a bad idea. It's downright stupid to agree to help someone when you don't have any fucking information."

Elektra shrugs dramatically. "I'm not scared."

And maybe not that bright, but I can use that. "Great," I say. "I've got a job for everyone, and if you pull this off right, it should be entertaining. Amusing is going to depend on what you find funny." I pull that silver ring out of my pocket, and hold it up between two fingers. "Some friend of mine got into trouble around here. I mean to get him back, and wreak a little havoc on the people hassling him. Who likes vengeance?"

"I like vengeance," mumbles Haneul, and I learn that he's sewn his lips halfway together. "What's that for?"

"That's for finding him." I flick the ring over to Elektra, who manages a snatch out of midair. Good. The faster these kids are, the better. I suspect whatever plan I work out next is going to involve a lot of running. "This belonged to him, and it was in a pawn shop that picks up tat from nearby brothels and the like. This must've come in within the last three days, maybe even just today. I'm going to send you two Habbalah back to the store to find out who they've been getting junk from during that time period."

"Why both of us?" Elektra asks. "I could do that myself. It's easy to ask." She flexes her fingers, tattoos writhing with the motion. "Shopkeepers aren't much of anything. They break easy."

"Because I don't want anyone broken," I say. Right. Habbalah. Adjust expectations and explanations accordingly. "If you break a few fingers, you'll get a fast answer, but it might not be the right answer, and I don't have time to run down every lead someone screams out. Doubly so if they run back the instant you disappear to tell the source that I'm a little annoyed and looking. I want you to ask _nicely_ , and there's two of you so that one of you bounces the play nice request, the other one of you can drag the poor sucker away before anything inconvenient gets said."

"Okay," Elektra says, straightening up like I've just given her a command. From what I know of armies, commands don't come with decent explanations like that. "And when we find out where it came from, then we go looking?"

"No, you come back and tell me. Then we move on. In fact, let's not come back here. Too public. Anyone got a private room we can use to meet up?"

The Habbalah and Calabite look at each other, then at the Shedite.

Eddie sighs, sloshing across the table. "Very well," it says. "We can meet at my place."

I find the paper that had Eddie's information written on it, and flip it over to draw out directions to that pawn shop, along with its name. "Here. Go forth and conquer. Try not to set anything on fire while you're out. We're keeping this subtle."

"We'll get it done," Elektra says. "You can count on us." Haneul nods solemnly beside her.

"Sure." I have serious doubts, but in this plan, I don't have a lot of space for only relying on sure things. If they run off and immediately betray me, or set up something hilarious, I'm not sure I'm much worse off than I was before.

"What about me?" Chelp asks, when the two Habbalah have run off to, if I'm lucky, get some damn answers for me about location. I can't plan to steal back my Djinn if I don't know where he is.

"Have you ever seen a building burn down, in Shal-Mari?"

"Sure," Chelp says. "There was this one place that installed the newest VapuTech elevator, and then someone walked into it with their new smartphone--"

"Right. Do you know where to find some gasoline? Or lighter fluid. Kerosene's fine. Any sort of good accelerant."

The Calabite blinks a few times, and scrubs fingers through her dripping hair. "Sure, but I thought you said we were going to be subtle."

"We're going to be subtle for now. Go get me as much accelerant as you can dig up, however you can dig it up, and a pack of lighters. Or matches in a pinch, but lighters are better."

"Are you going to set a building on fire?"

"Maybe."

"Are you going to set someone in particular on fire?"

"Really," I say, "it depends on where the mood takes me. Know what to do? And where to meet up?" She nods rapidly. I wish she'd stop doing that; whatever she's soaking in spattered my jacket, and it's trying to eat a hole in one sleeve. "Then go for it. We'll see you soon."

Eddie's quiet until she's gone. "This sounds like it will end in disaster," it says.

I rub the back of my neck. "Yeah, probably."

"Just so long as we're all clear in our expectations," Eddie says, and slides itself over the table to the open floor. "Come along."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elektra's jaunty little song comes from Anais Mitchell's _Hadestown_ , a brilliant concept album about Orpheus set during the Great Depression. I cannot recommend it highly enough, for those who want a little mood music for thoughts of In Nomine.


	13. In Which We Have A Conversation About The Wrong Sorts Of Things

The Shedite lives on the sixteenth floor of an apartment building I would call the inspectors on myself if I saw it standing anywhere on earth. We take the stairs--jumping over a few missing steps on the way--and Eddie unlocks the door for me, then steps aside. "I have an errand to take care of," it says. "I'll be there shortly."

Well. That's not suspicious at all.

But I smile, and shrug, and walk into its apartment to wait. That window's locked shut; I could resonate it open easily, drop down a floor, resonate back in through the window of the apartment below, and go running somewhere unexpected from there before anyone caught up, if Eddie shows up with someone I don't want to meet.

Credit where it's due. Working for Theft has made me much better at mapping out escape routes when I walk into a new location.

Calling the place a studio apartment would be more than it deserves. It's a bare room with dingy walls, and a repurposed dry bathtub in one corner serving as some sort of Shedite bed. There's a lockbox in one corner, and a calendar hanging from a nail. A table holds a creaky old television, an actual honest to god VCR, and a stack of VHS tapes. (I'm not going to look at a single one of those, for my own sanity.) That's it. Not just boring, but unsettling.

I flip through the calendar. There's a pen hanging beside it, and every day before today has been marked with a shaky cross.

For lack of better things to do, and out of general fidgetiness, I pick the lock on the lockbox. It feels a little...wrong. Not like cheating, exactly, because if Eddie knows that I'm with Theft then it knew full well what would happen when it left me alone in this room. But like maybe if this demon's got a single piece of privacy in its entire life, I should let it keep that private.

Which apparently isn't enough of a guilt trip to keep me from looking inside, anyway. And it's just...calendars. Appointment books and wall calendars, maybe forty years of them, all covered in marked-out days.

For a minute I wonder if the Shedite's marking time like it's trapped in some sort of cell. Day after day of "Yes, still a demon," on and on forever until the end of time. But a quick flip through one of the appointment books shows me a day with no mark, and then two on the subsequent day.

Someone screams, a few floors down. Then laughter rolls, a harsh bark from someone in the same place.

I have the lockbox closed again, and I'm looking at the window like this view of a brick wall is fascinating, when Eddie comes back into the room.

"Sorry," it says. "Like I said, I'm back soon enough." It slides across the floor to the calendar, and marks off today with the pen. That done, it falls into silence, and as far as I can tell a coma, for all the movement it's making.

I'm going to blow something up if I have to sit in here with a depressed Shedite until a bunch of strangers come back with happy news for me, and what has the world come to that I'm depending on this? "Hey, Eddie."

"Yes?"

"What was your name before?"

The Shedite directs several of its eyes to the floor. "Eder," it says. "Have you ever had another name?"

Apparently. Except that wasn't me, and I'm not responsible, and it wouldn't concern me in any way if someone else weren't making a big deal about things that happened before I came into existence. "No," I say. "Pretty much just Leo."

"Ah," Eddie says, and falls back into silence.

It would be rude to break things in here. He doesn't even have much to break.

"Hey, Eddie."

"Yes?"

"What do you want?" I almost said _What do you need_ , and that's a different question asked by a different person. Hell, that stupid conversation with the Lilim is messing with my head. Who would want to be a Lilim, anyway? Looking into people's heads all the time, and no way to escape when you get tied down. It's a lousy way to live. No wonder that Lilim tried to run away from...her. Anyone would, if they knew they had no way out whenever she chained them down and started in with the knives.

It turns several eyes on me, its slime acting as eyelids for their unnerved blinking. "Why would you ask something like that?"

"Because I'm curious. Because if you don't actually stab me in the back during any part of this, I'll owe you. I can't pay you back for your help if you don't want anything, can I?"

"I don't want anything," Eddie says. "You don't have to worry about it."

"No," I say, "I don't believe that. Everyone wants something, even if it's as simple as to be left alone so they can feel sorry for themselves in peace. I think you want out of Shal-Mari, because you sure aren't happy here, but I can't figure out where you want to go. There's nowhere in Hell that's going to be any friendlier than here, and if you wanted to go to earth, you'd have managed it by now. It's easy to get earth duty, even if you don't know the local language. You don't need a vessel, and you can pick up the basics from your host."

"Then make them do something," Eddie says. "That is, as I understand it, the process. Once a day like clockwork, someone does what they ordinarily would not, because I am there."

"Unless you work for the Game."

The Shedite sighs so long and low that it spreads across the floor like a melting scoop of the most horrific flavor of ice cream ever existed. "Do you think I would pass any of the Game's loyalty tests, if I attempted to find employment there?"

I sit down on the floor, a knee to my chest. "No, Eder, I don't think you would."

"So there you have it."

"There we have it." I watch this blob of misery and goo, and try to put the pieces together. It's harder work than usual. I haven't done much work with Shedim, and never any with a Shedite who didn't want to be one. "I was told by someone once," and let's not mention that the person who told me was a Mercurian of Flowers, "that angels can't Fall on accident. There's always another option, even if it's turn into a mess of Discord, and if one Falls, they must have _wanted_ it on some level. So why did you want to be a Shedite? That doesn't seem to be working out for you very well."

Eder shivers on the floor, eyes turned in on itself. "I didn't want to be myself anymore," it says. "There are only two other directions to go. Death, or down."

"And you chose down."

"Yes."

"Do you regret that?"

The Shedite pulls itself a bit more together. "If I did not know better," it says, "I would wonder if this was all some arcane setup for a terrible joke. Or arrest by the Game."

"Believe me," I say, "if I were a sleeper agent for the Game, I would have better things to do with my grand reveal than to harass the saddest Shedite in Shal-Mari."

"Yes, that seems logical. So I can only conclude from your questions so far that you're the strangest Calabite in Stygia."

Ouch. Point scored. "There are stranger out there," I say, "but maybe not in this direction. If you tell anyone, I'll destroy you."

"That's fair," it says.

I think about this for a while. The silence isn't so bad now that I've got a direction for my mind to work.

"Tell you what," I say. "If you can stick around close enough to follow me and mine back to Stygia, I'll get you what you want."

"I don't want anything," Eder insists, and I know that exact tone of voice. I've heard it out of myself.

And Penny would say, _Liar._

"Believe what you want, but if you can make it to Stygia while I'm still there, I'll make sure I pay my debts." I tilt my head back until my horns bump against the wall and won't let me look any further up. I remember days and nights of staring at the ceiling while spending time with Regan, bored and frustrated and thinking that I just wanted to get back to what I'd been before. Maybe that was even what I _did_ want. It's hard to tell anymore.

"Maybe I will come along," Eder says. "I haven't anything better to do."

"Hey, Eder."

"Yes?"

"You were saying that no one remembers the songs of those people you lived with." I keep on going, though it's curling in on itself like it expects--I don't know. Like I'm going somewhere horrible with this, and what's wrong with all of us that we hurt each other when there's not even a reason for it? I can get inflicting pain to show who's boss, to get what we want, even to relieve stress, but there's so little point in some of it around here. Like pain is its own point. "Will you sing me one? Before the fan club gets here."

"You don't know the language," it says. "You wouldn't understand."

"Yeah. I know. But you would."

It doesn't say anything. So I don't bother it. Stupid request, anyway. I was never a history major, or much into anthropology, or even into music, and I wouldn't get a thing out of it. It just felt like something that someone ought to do. Remembering what's gone before, even if it doesn't matter. Like that way that damn Lilim wants to remember her lost Sister, who was too dumb to check his contract for loopholes like, oh, hey, you'll be working for a _Habbalite_ , you might want to reconsider that before you sign. Do I even want to be made out of the Forces of someone who did something that dumb? It's like...some things I've done before. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. How did she put it? Sharp enough to cut himself.

The Shedite starts singing. Multiple mouths, and multiple voices, like I didn't even know Shedim could do. I can't pick one word out from another in there, and it's barely singing above a whisper, but it's...I don't know. Strange. Alien. Perfectly human, from a branch of humanity that got stomped on by some other branch almost by accident. (See, they don't need demons to make enough trouble for themselves.)

And when it finishes, I don't know what to say.

"What about you?" Eder asks.

"What about me?"

"Give me something you remember," it says. "Before they get back. I won't tell."

"I don't really sing, Eder. And all the poetry I know is in English. Do you even understand that?"

"No," it says, "but that doesn't matter."

So I look at the ceiling and try to remember something. From college, I suppose. In some weird ways, it was the happiest time of my life. Sure, I was interning for a Habbalite, but that was only a few days a week instead of every hour of every day. I got to sit in classrooms where the professor never ate anyone for backtalking them, and learn about...strange, human things. I had a girlfriend who hurt me a lot less than even that Habbalite did, and liked me well enough to keep me around. Good times.

Sure, I remember a few things from then that I memorized from the rereading alone.

"Pain has an element of blank. It cannot recollect when it began, or if there was a time when it was not." My breath hitches in, and I couldn't say why. It's just been a really weird day. "It has no future but itself, its infinite realms contain its past, enlightened to perceive new periods of pain."

"Poetry," Eder says. "What's it about?"

"The present," I say. "And what overwhelms it, until you can't think of anything else ever happening, or anything else ever having happened, or ever getting to any other place at all but where you are." I roll my shoulders forward, and drape an arm over my knee. "It's a good poem. If you ever get to earth, and pick up the language, you should look up the author. Emily Dickinson. She wrote a lot of twee stuff about nature and religion, but once in a while her stuff just..." I wave a hand, which would not have sufficed as a proper analysis of that poem for any of my lit classes in college. "Anyway. About how long do you think the fan club is going to take? And do you think it's going to come back at all?"

"If they aren't distracted," Eder says, "I expect they'll return. The Habbalah have something to prove, and the Calabite wants to impress you."

"If she can get me enough gasoline to set a building on fire in two hours in Shal-Mari, then I _will_ be impressed."

But it turns out Chelp's not back in two hours. In two and a half hours, the Habbalah sweep into the room, grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats, even though Haneul's ripped out the stitches in its mouth to do so.

"Guess what, Leo," says Elektra, and holds up a little Calabite that I've never seen before. He's pinned between the two of them, and looks blank-eyed terrified in a way that says _Habbalite resonance_ even more than it says _perfectly reasonable fear of Habbalah_. "We found someone that you're really going to want to talk to."


	14. An Interlude, In Which Someone Is Missing

Unathi set down the book it had been reading, and looked about the room. There was something wrong, though it couldn't quite identify the problem. The Djinn was in the exact slump he had been in since it prodded him a few hours back, the Shedite was reading a celebrity cookbook under the table, and--

Ah. That.

"Secundum," Unathi said, and made sure that it was not sounding too accusatory in this question, because it was certain--well, almost certain, one never knew what little inter-follower rivalries might spring up unannounced--that this was not the Shedite's fault. "Where is Primus?"

"I don't know," said the Shedite. "Should I know? I thought it was running errands."

The Habbalite wondered if someone had overheard its conversations with the Impudite, and taken them the wrong way. "Go find him," it said. "And do try to come back soon, whether or not you suceed."


	15. In Which Past Experience Informs Present Actions

We all sit down on the floor like there's going to be a campfire and marshmallows in the middle. Except instead it's scrawny little Calabite who no one gets to set on fire until I'm through with him.

"He knows," Elektra insists, though the Calabite's been silent since she dragged him in. She's sitting opposite Haneul, in some sort of competition/flirting mode with the other Habbalite, whereas Eder lurks across from me, judging us all. "The Shedite at the store told us exactly who brought over that stuff, and when we asked him about it, he tried to run. So he must know."

Haneul murmurs, "Someone's feeling worried."

"Of course he is. You resonated him into it." I lean back on my hands, and even from that position I can still look down on the demon huddled on the floor. If this were on the corporeal--if this were a _human_ kid I was trying to interrogate, I'd have a lot more options. But demons aren't so good at responding well to kindness and sympathy. They take it as a sign of weakness, or some sort of dominance move that needs to be pushed back against. "Elektra, I want you to handle the pushing. Haneul, see if you can give me a reading beyond that. Try to look deep, because 'Hey, he's feeling what Elektra made him feel' isn't very useful."

"What should I do?" asks Eder, and I'm almost sure it's being sarcastic.

"Block the door if he bolts." Though that could be useful in its own way. See where he runs, and then try again if he doesn't run anywhere useful... But, no, that's a last-minute emergency plan, not one to start with. Too much chance of being led into a trap without any time to prepare. "Elektra, give me some calm, here."

"You don't want him scared?" She sounds honestly surprised. And this is how I can tell these Habbalah haven't done a lot of corporeal work. That Seneschal I worked for used to test new emotions out on me just to find out how long they'd last and what they'd make me do. Sticking to a basic repertoire of Angry, In Love, Terrified, Depressed just doesn't get a Habbalite as far as a nuanced set of options will.

"Not so scared he can't form a coherent sentence." And I'm not sure the subject of all our interest has more Forces left than your average human. Someone must've chewed on him recently, because demons who can't even maintain baseline fledging standards tend to disappear in Hell. They're just useful enough, compared to demonlings and humans, that someone will want that handy resonance around in an easily controlled form.

Elektra shrugs, but she's not looking upset about it. Thoughtful. Which is good, because I don't have the time or patience here to do a lot of babysitting and coaxing if I can't keep the fan club in line, especially since coaxing Habbalah usually means picking another target for them to shred. And I'm running low on obvious targets.

The Calabite's breathing slows down, and he looks somewhat less like he's going to gibber and run through a wall. Then further, until he's looking back at us with a different sort of blankness. That is _not_ the calm I wanted, and if I was in charge of shaking this Habbalite into corporeal readiness, there would be some lecturing involved. Fortunately? Not my job. Someone else already decided she was ready to frolic through the corporeal fields at least once, and they can deal with her failures the rest of the time.

I snap my fingers in front of his face. "Paying attention?" He just stares at me. "Right. I'm missing a Djinn. You may have seen him lately. Kind of a horror show of teeth and claws, much bigger than you, probably not real happy about the situation. This ringing any bells?"

No answer. I glance to Elektra. "Something a little perkier," I suggest.

The Calabite twitches back away from me, pupils dilating. Some types of body language work just well in Hell as they do on the corporeal. "I'm not telling you anything," he says, all in a rush. "You can't make me."

"Hey," I say, with a nice smile. "Relax. No one here is going to hurt you. I need a few questions answered, that's all." I shake my head slightly at Elektra's questioning look. Let's not actually relax him, after how well that did last time. "The Djinn I mentioned. Seen anything like him lately?"

"No," the Calabite says quickly. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know why you brought me here. I didn't do anything."

I look to Haneul, who is no Seraph, but may be able to get something useful out of all this. The Habbalite rubs the spot on its head where an ear should go, and says, "All the excitement is from what she did, but he's scared, too. And." He draws in a deep breath, air whistling through his broken teeth. "He's more scared of someone else than you."

If I could make out any real expression on that Habbie's face, I'd say that Haneul is looking a bit woozy himself now. Of the two Habbalah I worked for, one of them hated trying to look into existing emotions, and the other did it all the damn time. I have no idea what it's like for a Habbalite to do that. Maybe it makes them acknowledge the reality of people other than themselves... Though, from my experience, it doesn't do a damn thing for inspiring any empathy.

"See," I say to the Calabite, "that's a problem." I lift a hand up, where he can't see because he's jittering and staring at the floor, me, not up above his head. "You really ought to be more scared of me than you are of anyone who's not here in the room with you." I hold my thumb and forefinger apart slightly for Elektra, and when she figures it out, the Calabite flinches away from me. Faster breathing. She probably overshot on the terror, but she's had nowhere near the experience of some people in grading this stuff finely. "Who are you protecting, here?"

"I'm not--"

I make a sharp cutting gesture, and the Calabite actually shuts up, flinching back. I could get far too used to this. "Here's the thing. You could be quiet because you're so loyal to whoever you work for." That's a guess more than a sure thing, but his eyes widen further, so I think I've found the angle. "But I don't think that's why. It's because you're afraid that if you tell me anything they'd rather you not, they'll get to you. Valid fear. I bet they wouldn't like it."

This would be a great time for Haneul to chime in with more information, but that Habbie's frowning intently at the Calabite, like he can't figure out what's inside the Destroyer's head. So I'm still winging it. That's fine. I give our interrogation subject a steady look, and wait.

"You don't know," he says, "what it would _do_ to me."

"No, I don't." I slouch back, propped up by my hands again. "Why don't you tell me?" Yes, please do expand on what sort of obstacles I'm looking at.

"It would eat me," the Calabite says, and starts shaking. "Like with Prima and Quintum. You can't make me. You can't make me say _anything_ , you can't do anything worse--"

"Hey, hey. Quiet." He shuts up, while I smile at him. "You have any idea who that Djinn works for? The one your master picked up." Oh, I think he does. I can tell the difference between dumb and knowing terror at ten paces. "Right. So you know what I'm going to suggest? That I know a lot more about getting away clean than you do. And I know what happens when you don't. Right this minute, you're caught here, and you can't get out. You tell me what I need to know, and we'll let you run with all your Forces still attached. You might even be able to find a new master while I'm busy with your old one."

"I'm not scared of you," the Calabite whimpers.

Oh, you poor kid. You should be. I ask Elektra, "Have you ever played basketball?"

She blinks at me a few times. "What?"

"Sorry, metaphor. You ever bounced someone's emotions up and down?" I make an illustrative hand gesture. "It only works if you're adept at the whole Habbalite thing, since you need to keep hitting them with a new one right when they're just settling into the high or low of the last one. Like dribbling a ball. Or, since there's two of you, you could take turns. See if you can come up with some fun contrasts."

The Habbalah share a look over the Calabite's head.

"Sounds like fun," Elektra says, and the Calabite starts laughing hysterically.

Haneul tilts his head to one side, like some sort of dog studying how to get to the biscuit on the edge of a high counter, and the Calabite bursts into tears. The Habbalite looks rather pleased with himself, and when he points his chin at Elektra, that's clearly a sign of challenge.

Eder and I watch for a few minutes. Laughter and tears and terror and rage--that one's cut off short by shuddering disgust, followed by a wide-eyed love that's so full of hope that--okay. I raise a hand again. "Give me something that lets him talk."

I've been here before.

Well. Not seated in this position.

Not going to think about that right now. It's beside the point. I have a partner to retrieve, and there's not an inhabitant of Hell that doesn't deserve whatever happens to it, me included.

The noisy, shallow breathing from the Calabite reminds me that I have work to do. I just stare at him a bit, wait for him to meet my gaze. His face is all snotty. "You want to talk about this?"

"You're going to kill me," the Calabite says.

"Nope. Not unless you try to pull something. I'm not going to hurt you, and neither is anyone here, if you tell me what's going on." It's a pity this deeply inconvenient reputation for keeping promises hasn't traveled all the way to Shal-Mari. "I'd offer to find a Lilim to seal the deal, but frankly, I'm not willing to pay the commission on that. But I haven't laid a hand on you yet, have I?" He shakes his head to me. I try one of my less threatening smiles, but not one so nice that he'll be suspicious. "Where's the Djinn?"

"The Eighty-Eight," the Calabite whispers. That doesn't mean a damn thing to me, but Elektra whistles low.

"More details," I say, and sit up, resting my hands on my knees where he can see them. "Give me everything I need, and I'll give you a little help when you run."

"He's in the basement. If you go after him, you'll get caught. Worse than dying." The Calabite stares at me with an intense adoration that I don't want from anyone, not ever. That sort of thing is never real. "You should get away."

"Haneul?" What I'd do for a Seraph right now, or even a _Mercurian_ to trace me some lines of connections. (Not an Elohite, though. Those creepy bastards are too manipulative for anyone's good, and you can't trust them for an instant.) The Habbalite glares at the back of the Calabite's head, and then shrugs to me grudgingly. No help there. I look at Elektra instead, and she wiggles a hand in the air.

Good enough for now. "Someone tell me about the Eighty-Eight, since I'm not a local."

"It's a brothel," Elektra says. "That's Lust territory, not Gluttony. Not one of the cannibal clubs. It's..." She shrugs quickly. "Not _top_ of the line, where you need a distinction to get through the doors, but expensive. Only demons for the workers, and it's all will shackles and screaming." She wrinkles her nose, and I can't tell if she means she's not into rape, or not into rape when using assisting devices to keep the victim pinned down. "I've never been there, but I heard about it when--" Her quick glance at Haneul is almost invisible. "--some friend visited. They've got good security."

Everyone in the room twitches at the knock on the door. Eder slides an eyeball under the door, then opens it up to reveal Chelp. "Hey," she says. "I found the stuff. You want me to haul it all the way up here?"

"No, that's fine." I get to my feet, and offer the Calabite on the floor a friendly hand up. (I want it to stop _looking_ at me that way, but. Yeah. Needs must.) "We found someone to help you with the carrying. Be nice, okay? The kid's had a rough day."

Haven't we all.


	16. In Which I Try Plan A

If I had a week and Zhune at my side, I could steal the owner of the brothel out of it without any employee noticing she was missing.

If I had a week and Zhune at my side, I _wouldn't be here_ , so I need to stop speculating on what I could do with more resources and more time. Time is--indefinite. Worrisome. My partner could already be giblets in there, though from what I've coaxed out of this nervy little Calabite, I think he's still alive. I've never yet met a Habbalite that couldn't express a little patience when going after something it really wanted, and it sounds like this Habbalite _really_ wants my Djinn hurting. If--when I get Zhune out of here, I'm going to ask for the story of what set that up. Must've been something impressive, to convince someone to go to so much trouble for revenge.

Me, I don't go in for complicated schemes of revenge. Just enough to hurt people who hurt me, if time and circumstances allow. That's why I'm being practical and getting the gasoline discreetly staged near the brothel while I figure out if there's any damn way I can get inside without being spotted.

Preliminary survey says: no. The few windows are barred, there are obvious guards at the front door and, from what the Calabite says, more inside. Of all the times to wish for Regan and some heavy weaponry...

More time would be good. I don't want to wait too long. There's a long distance between living and dead for that Habbalite to drag Zhune down, and neither he nor I will be very happy with most of the stops along the way. Besides, if I don't get this done soon, I think my nerve is going to break.

So I collect my fan club in a nearby alley, and lay out one of the worst plans I've come up with in a while.

"You hold onto him," I say, and point to the shivering little Calabite that loves me horribly for few days longer, unless Elektra or Haneul forgets and bounces a new emotion through him. "Don't hurt him, just hold him, in case he changes his mind about anything. I'm going inside. If I don't show up again in a reasonable amount of time, set the place on fire."

Chelp flicks a lighter on and off, and beams up at me. "Okay!" Now that's a kid I wouldn't mind working with again, even if she's about as bright as a human. Enthusiastic, but not too aggressive about it. I'd try to recruit her for Theft if we weren't supposed to play nice around Dark Humor, and if I didn't get the feeling that maybe my Prince doesn't want to encourage a whole trend of Calabim setting things on fire under his Word.

"How long is a reasonable amount of time?" asks Eder, who has been ominously silent during all of this. Or maybe depressively silent; I don't know the Shedite well enough to tell. At least it helped carry the gas cans.

"I don't know. Use your best judgment." I'd tell them to listen for any screaming, but between the nature of the brothel and the noise in Shal-Mari, I don't think that would help. "Run the line all the way back from that spot I showed you, so that you can be out of the way before it catches on the fuel at the brothel. Leave someone watching to make sure it _does_ catch, and then ditch before anyone realizes who's responsible."

Eder clears a few throats. "Doesn't this leave you inside a burning building? Hypothetically speaking."

"Wouldn't be the first time." I shake my wings, and let my jacket fall into place around me. "I'll meet up with the rest of you later, one way or another."

"Unless you end up dead," Eder says.

"Nothing worth doing is really safe. And nothing safe is really worth doing." I flash my best Magpie smile at the group of them. "If I go down in a fire I told you to start, you can all laugh over it later." And I saunter away like this is no big deal, and I do this kind of shit all the time.

Above the door of the building, two Balseraphs in luminescent paint writhe in figure eights, neither looking anything but horrified about the fact. It's several levels less tacky than the neon most of the brothels use. Slightly disturbing, but I expect that's the point.

I've never really understood the Shal-Mari Words, even if we're supposed to play nice with some of them. Monkey Dominance Rituals, Bad Jokes, and Lack Of Self-Control. Catering to the sorts of things humans want to get up to already is one way of sucking up a lot of Essence, but I wouldn't want to serve any of the above. This would be case in point. An entire establishment catering to demons, using demons, where they're just aping the sort of thing humans can figure out how to do without us showing up in the first place.

Never mind that. I'm stalling. I shove my way through the street crowd like I belong around here, and walk in through the front door, right past the two Djinn standing guard. They look me up and down, but they don't stop me. I'm clearly not some skulking demonling or human soul, and if I can't afford the prices inside, the security inside will throw me right back out.

The door shuts behind me, and for an instant I wonder if I've gone deaf. But it's just some impressively thorough sound-proofing. The outside noise is cut back to nothing but a gentle hum. I can hear my own footsteps on the hardwood floor of the lobby. A red-scaled Balseraph with golden wings lounges at a counter, and lounges somewhat more attentively on seeing me. "Can I help you?" he asks, with that special blend of deference and arrogance I've only ever heard from Bals doing service work.

I saunter up to the desk. This is half my old Calabite of Fire amble from when I was an architect and playing human, and half Zhune's favorite pretending to be James Bond walk. Demons respect nothing but power, and since most of us can't size someone up accurately at a glance, the next best thing to having power is having confidence. "Maybe. I'm bored. What do you recommend?"

"It depends," the Balseraph says, and six eyes do an excellent job of looking me over critically without being so critical as to make some touchy patron take offense at it. "Really, with as many options as we have available... Do you have any preferences in Band? Or perhaps an idea of how much damage you're likely to cause?"

I shrug. "Balseraphs, mostly," I say, and look him over just as critically. "For the latter... Depends on what sort of set-up you have here. You don't exactly have a menu, do you." And if that Calabite was right about what this place prides itself on--

"We have a library," the Balseraph says, smoothly confident without any flinch away from my look. Someone's sure of his place in this establishment. Balseraphs are always sure of where they stand, and I bet his position's nowhere near as secure as he's convinced himself it is. "Lending privileges are available to members, and you may be sure that anything suggested within the library is within our capabilities here, for those who who have the funds."

I don't make much of a show of thinking this over, because I don't want to push this too hard. Natural confidence will carry me through damn near anything until I can find a quiet spot to go invisible with my favorite Song, and hunt down my Djinn. Who is _supposedly_ downstairs. That Calabite's going to either get a little help running away or a lot of retribution, depending on how accurate his information has been. "Yeah, sure. Show me there."

The Bal slithers away from the desk, and escorts me down a quiet, elegant hallway. Honestly elegant, like Regan would live in if she decorated more in hardwoods and less in black and glass. He indicates a door with one wing. "If you need any help with the books--"

"I'm pretty sure I'm literate," I say dryly. "Don't worry. I won't dog-ear any of the pages."

The Balseraph bows low, finding no good response to this, and hurries back to his counter. But not so fast that I feel like I can just stand there until he's gone around the corner, so I open the door and step inside.

To be fair, it's a decent library. If the books weren't all full of disgusting, horrible things, I could happily collapse in one of the armchairs--I notice how they've been arranged in separate nooks divided by shelves, so that no one has strangers reading over their shoulder--and stay in here a while, other goals all aside. By my luck, there's already someone else in here. Which means I need to at least pretend to consult a book or two before I step outside and disappear.

The Habbalite flipping through an illustrated book glances up at me as I walk past, and stares.


	17. An Interlude, In Which Plan A Has Some Flaws

The Impudite stalked down the hall of the third floor, hands curled into fists. "I cannot _believe_ that he simply walked in--"

"There's no need to fuss," Unathi said, and had to broaden his stride to keep up. "This is what you have security for. If anything, I ought to apologize. There should have been a description waiting for the door guards, or the receptionist."

The Impudite flung open a door. "This is the problem with Theft. They... _sneak_. They do the wrong thing at the wrong moment, show up exactly when you don't want them, try to take what's _yours_." She rolled the body on the floor of the room over with her foot to tilt its hands upward. "You can use these. They won't break."

Unathi stripped the shackles from the warm corpse. "If I had realized that anyone would follow the Djinn back here--"

"Oh, stop apologizing," the Impudite said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. "These things happen. I'm only--annoyed. I try to run an establishment that has some standards. Where we don't end up with brawls in the corridors. In the bedrooms, yes, if someone's paying for it."

Unathi looped the shackles over one arm, and leaned in to kiss her between the horns. "Taken care of, and nothing left to worry about." This was not, it admitted to itself, strictly true. It had done its research, readied for a chance, laid chains of information and preparations that kicked in right on cue, and it had never once considered the possibility that the Djinn's partner would follow him. Djinn followed their attuned, that went without saying. But attuned did not generally track down their Djinn. Even if they wanted to, most weren't _able_.

And who would want a Djinn back?

It considered this as it returned to where the guards had restrained the Calabite. The Impudite would never put the damages on its account, but Unathi would offer to pay, and the Impudite would not turn down the offer, either. Best to keep the accounts balanced. No friendship lasted if the balances tipped too far in one direction or another.

"How long will he be out?" it asked one of the guards standing watch over the Calabite.

She frowned down at the limp body. (But not a corpse. That would have been so much less useful, and it would have to compliment the Impudite on hiring security with some sense of restraint.) "Not long. Few more minutes. Hard to tell with VapuTech tasers."

"Hard to tell with corporeal tasers, when they even work that way," said the other guard dryly. He moved out of the way to let Unathi crouch down and bind the Destroyer's wrists together. "You need help hauling that?"

"No, thank you. I have this under control." Unathi took one horn in hand, and dragged the Calabite away, leaving the guards to their discussion of technology and the relative merits thereof.

Yes, it took satisfaction from letting the Calabite thump roughly down the stairs on the way to the basement room, but only a little. That was petty. Beneath it. All the real prize lay in dragging the Calabite into the room, and letting it fall onto the floor where the Djinn could see.

Unathi paid close attention to the Djinn. And he was oh so _angry_. Beautiful. Angry, and beneath that a sweet spring of growing panic. It could sip from those like a cup of mead and feel the heady buzz.

The Djinn didn't so much as twitch, but that was beside the point. The truth was evident to those who had the eyes to see it.

Unathi paced out several steps, and considered the Calabite. Closer was better. Close enough that the Djinn might try some lunge was best of all. But there were dangers in that, too. It settled for pulling the Calabite away to beside the coffee table. Props could be useful. It would have to consider the options. And if the Calabite could force anything out of its resonance under this influence, best to give him an obvious, inconsequential target. Destroyers usually went for those first when they knew none of the living targets could be hassled successfully.

Secundum slipped back into the room. (Or perhaps Primum, now, as it had found no sign of the missing creature.) "Unathi," it said, "the Impudite wants to know if she can have the Calabite when you're done."

"Maybe," Unathi says. "I'm not willing to constrain my options that far quite yet." It pointed beneath the table. "Wait there until you're called for, and quietly."

The Shedite slipped under the table, keeping a wary distance from the Calabite despite everything. Perhaps this follower was more clever than some of the others. "Will I get to help?"

"Perhaps," Unathi said. There were so many options.


	18. In Which This Hurts

I was expecting to wake up--the part of me that was expecting to wake up at all, which was not all of my brain, because under the circumstances the forecast was suggesting a 40% chance of death--to a fair amount of discomfort from getting jumped by three Djinn and a Habbalite, but instead I wake up to my fingers being broken.

What's sad is that this isn't even a first for me. Admittedly, it's been a several years since the last time.

All this wake-up has going for it is that I didn't hit consciousness again until three quarters of the way through the process. I am no fucking stoic to not twitch and howl when the last two fingers go, but twitching isn't going to do me any good. Whatever's locked around my wrists, at the small of my back, must be what's got me feeling as weak as if I were back on the corporeal, and head-fogged nine ways to Sunday like I couldn't resonate my way through a paper bag.

"So there we are," says the Habbalite, and steps over me into view. I'm lying on the ground in a room without any of the looks of the building above (this had better be the same building, or I am screwed in entirely new ways), all concrete floors and unpainted concrete walls. There's Zhune across the floor, a slumped mass of Djinn so inert he might well be dead (he is not dead, I am _sure_ of this), with red chains wrapped around him.

The Habbalite crouches down in front of me, blocking that exciting sight. Most Habbalah I've known were most of the way to looking human aside from their exciting body mods, but this one's white, in the sense of paper and paint rather than a checkbox on a census form. It wears a tailored black suit, and its eyes, fixed on me with the most thoughtful expression I've seen in a while, are enormous and golden. If it weren't for the precise squares of skin--of other people's skins--sewn across its face and neck and one wrist, I'd swear someone had dropped an Elohite into Shal-Mari. It's a perfect horrific wonder, except for a scabbed-over gash on one wrist where the broken glass hit while I was trying to resist security.

"That's not usually my first move," it tells me, and sounds distantly apologetic. "However, given your Word and Band, the precaution seemed sound. You must be his partner."

"And you must be the asshole who jacked my Djinn." What have I got left to work with here? My resonance, already accounted for. Eight Essence, hoarded for...I don't know what, I don't usually spend that kind of stuff on anything but Songs and last-ditch efforts to get out of some situation I think I still _can_ escape. Which the situation upstairs was not.

I wonder how good this Habbalite is at looking inside my head.

"I suppose it is ironic," it murmurs. It can look contemplative all it likes while I lie here with my fingers feeling exactly like they've all been snapped. The longer it stalls, the better, and did I really leave the issue of timing down to the best judgment of a Shedite with such poor long-term planning that it Fell out of a moment of misery? This has not been one of my better plans.

"It's not ironic," I say, and bend a thumb back to get a better feel for what's binding me. An artifact, no duh, but I can't feel from here if it's unbreakable or not. If the chains are something I can work through, I'll get one shot at that. If they're not...fuck, how much do I want to depend on this Habbie having planning skills as lousy as mine? "It's just an unfortunate coincidence. Ironic would be if you stole my Djinn after he ate your partner."

The Habbalite just looks at me. Kinda as if a pig stood up and started dancing. Yeah, I get that a lot with this Band. 

"Did he?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Did he eat your partner," I say, carefully and slowly like I think I'm talking to an idiot. Which I don't, but the longer I can keep this conversation running, the less this is going to hurt. Maybe. "He's got an enemies list longer than your Prince's grocery list, so we haven't really had a chance to go over the details. Maybe you could let me know what the grudge is, and who the hell you are?"

"My name is Unathi," says the Habbalite, polite as all that. It sits back on its heels, fingers resting lightly on a pair of knives at its belt beneath that exquisitely tailored coat. I'm no connoisseur of fashion, but I know the sort of thing Zhune wears when I see it. He'd love this outfit. Maybe we can strip the jacket off the Habbie's body when we get out of here. "The details of my grudge aren't any of your business. None of this was, until you chose to make it so. As long as you're here..." It stands up, and draws one of the knives. "I may as well make the best of it."

"I'm sorry to have interrupted your day. I meant to stop by and leave again without bothering anyone, but you know how it goes. Things come up." I can't get my resonance to _focus_ on those shackles, and I learned a long time ago that it's never worth trying to resonate another demon directly. I need more environment to work with, and I hate that it's standing behind me and I can't _see_ it.

It plants a foot in the middle of my back, just above my bound hands, and takes the edge of my right wing in its hand. "You would have been rude to come and go without any greeting. How do you like being a Calabite?"

"I don't know, I haven't given it much thought." Not having Seraphim in Hell is one of its features. "How do you like being a Habbalite?"

"Quite well," it says, "thank you." The cool flat of its knife rests against the tip of my wing. "I have sometimes wondered if one could turn a Calabite into an Impudite through a process of reduction. Trim down the wings, whittle away the horns, remove that Discord, and see what's left."

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. But if anyone would know, it would be the Vapulans, because I'm sure they've tried." I'm sure there's no reason to repeat the experiment. I'm sure this is going to hurt.

"You're probably right," says the Habbalite. "However, I've always disliked the untidy aspect of Calabite wings. Rather like a bad haircut. Fortunately, with the right equipment, this is an easy fix."

I can't do any sort of talking when I'm doing all this screaming. I wonder if I'm bleeding back there. Can't feel anything but the knife and where the knife has been, can't even think hard enough to _not_ try to resonate away the bonds on me, I'm a Calabite of Theft and I should be able to get out of _anything_ but my resonance skitters right off until I've got this potential for destruction in mind that's got to go somewhere and I can't see the knife and I don't know what broke but it wasn't enough. It wasn't what I wanted. Wasn't the Habbalite, wasn't the Habbalite's tools, wasn't anything worthwhile. Probably some piece of the ground, and I can't listen for the sound of breaking over my own screaming.

"Tidier," says the Habbalite, and steps back over me. It holds up two strips of skin, and, ha, I guess I bleed from the wings after all, because a thin line of black blood is oozing down them. "I'll hem those for you later when I have my needles on hand, and I've decided what sort of thread would look best. Do you have a color preference?"

I keep my mouth shut until I think I can speak in a single clear sentence again. "I'd have to see what my options were." Great. Now even my throat hurts. Don't think that's going to improve as this conversation goes on, either.

The Habbalite cleans its knife on a handkerchief. I can picture it easily enough in one of the places Henry and Zhune used to run, out of the few stories I've gotten of those days. I wonder if _Henry_ did something to one of its friends or minions, or to the Habbalite itself, and Zhune cleaned up the mess. I'd like to think that's the likely cause of all this, because I'm not a big fan of Henry right now, but let's be honest. Zhune can make plenty of enemies on his own without any crazy Impudite lending him a hand. Just look at how many I've made.

"I had hoped," it says, "for a stronger opinion." It winds that strip it cut around the serrated blade of its knife, and takes a bite. "I thought you were old enough to have strong opinions by now, but perhaps you're still in that young and formless stage where you merely imprint on your elders." I should probably be looking elsewhere, but I cannot stop watching it eat that piece of me. Gluttony. Right.

The gash on its wrist seals up, even the blood fading, until that's pure white skin again. Oh. Oh hell. If I manage to hurt the Habbalite a little, as a way of making a point and a distraction, this could get all sorts of bad that I hadn't even thought about. And it's probably doing this in front of me to make sure I know that.

I don't actually like having a lot of experience with the Habbalite psyche. It doesn't make me any happier, just better-informed.

"I'm a Calabite," I say, before it can come up with some new tactic. "I don't have strong opinions on fashion. Under the circumstances, I'm going to leave it up to your best judgment."

"If you insist." It finishes off every bite of what it cut from me, and tucks the knife away into its belt, beside the straight-bladed knife. I wonder if that one is ordinary, or a completely different type of horrible artifact. Or is this trick something Haagenti hands out to Servitors, and I've never heard of it before? How would I be able to tell? "I thought you should know," it says, crouching down in front of me again, "that this isn't personal. None of this is about you. But once I went to say that, I realized that you've made yourself part of this situation. You've caused me some trouble, and more for a friend. There's no way I'm approaching the process from a neutral standpoint anymore. So rather than lie about that, let's be honest." It grabs my chin, and tilts me onto my side. "I'm doing this for your sake as much as for his."

"He's a Djinn. He doesn't care." My ankles jerk uselessly against whatever's holding me locked down there. Not another artifact, doesn't feel like I'm tied down to anything but myself, and I'd look but this Horror has my face pointing at it like it really wants me to pay attention.

"He cares," the Habbalite says, "whether or not he wants to admit this fact. Did you know that? I find most Djinn do. They make for interesting psychological puzzles that way, if a repetitious set. Whereas most Calabim simply...destroy things, and wish to destroy things." It takes out the straight-edged knife. "Which eye do you want to keep?"

"Oh, come on. I thought you were a professional."

It actually blinks at me. "I beg your pardon?"

"You don't do eye-stabbing as your second move. Third, I guess, if we're counting the fingers, but that's entirely the wrong place for it. You either start with it to show you're serious, or you build up to it with smaller acts to heighten the anticipation. This is all out of order. You've already started cutting off body parts, so it's lost its impact, and this is the second dramatic choice about oncoming torture that you've given me. Presumably if I refuse to pick, you offer to take both out, but then I couldn't see anything coming, and the terror potential of not knowing isn't usually anywhere near the level of what you can get out of making someone speculate on what _is_ seen." I would roll my eyes, but I don't want to give it any new ideas. "Are you in some sort of hurry? Because it reads to me like you're rushing this, and that's always going to give you a drop in quality."

The Habbalite sits on its heels, still holding my face. "You're critiquing my performance."

"I'm not saying this is an amateur torture session, because credit where it's due for that whole creepy bit about hemming, but I've been through better ones."

It makes a thoughtful sort of noise, and drops my head back to the floor. That would probably hurt if there weren't so many other parts of my body screaming in pain right now that I don't have a lot of attention left for bruises. "Here I was," it says, "thinking you didn't have any strong opinions."

When it approaches with the knife, I can barely hold still and flinching is a sign of weakness that Habbalite always take the wrong way, but the knife doesn't go into _me_. The Habbie cuts through the sleeves of my jacket, then through the shirt below, and strips both off me. The shirt's no great loss, but I liked that jacket, and I don't. Much like. Being half naked in front of people in this body. Especially in front of a Habbalite, and that was a _great_ plan, Leo, distract it by talking about your own history. What kind of idiot am I to give it a free hook like that?

The Habbalite rolls me onto my stomach, with one hand to the back of my neck so that I can't, what, wiggle inconveniently? It traces one of the words burned into my back with the tip of its knife. "Althea," it says. "She must have been quite the traditionalist. No sense of style, though. Look at this composition. No balance at all. And these..." It runs the flat of the blade along the scars on my shoulders and arms, where the piercings used to go. "I can see what she was trying for, but, no. I wouldn't do the same myself. There's nothing wrong with adding some decorative touches to a student, but it ought to add to their appeal, not try to imitate the more banal Habbalite body modifications. What went in these? Rings or bars?"

And any evasion is another hook. Fuck it all. "Rings," I say. I do flinch when the knife cuts into one of the scars. "Not your preference?"

"No, rather not. Especially like this. What metal did she choose?"

"Bronze."

"All wrong. I begin to see the problem here." It stands up, and rolls me onto my back. Onto my broken fingers and bleeding wings, and I gasp when I meant to snarl. "My Calabite has disappeared. I don't suppose you have any idea what happened to it?"

"Not really. Have you tried putting posters on telephone poles?"

"I suspect," the Habbalite says gently, "that you're not being perfectly honest, here. However, the point remains that this has created a job opening, if you'd be willing to take the position." It watches me, but I don't think its attention is exactly on me. What it wants to know is how Zhune is reacting to all this, and that fractional hint of a smile on its face tells me everything it knows about how Zhune feels right now.

"I can't say. That you've been doing a great job. Of selling me on it." I need to not be lying on my own broken hands. I need to not by lying on my own bleeding wings. I need to be somewhere other than here. I'm not getting used to the pain with time. Sort of the opposite.

"I should let you know, for the sake of making an informed decision, that if you don't want to work for me, you'll end this working for the owner of the Eighty-Eight. Assuming that you survive our conversation, which is not a given."

Surely my Prince wouldn't let _Lust_ keep me. We're supposed to get along with them, and...I am not a poster boy for getting along with Lust, am I. Fuck. I've never invoked a Prince of my own accord, don't ever intend to, but even if this situation was starting to convince me it might be worth a try, I think is a _bad day_ for asking Valefor to lend me a hand.

"I think that would be a bad plan," I say, and I need to hold my teeth together to not say something more or wrong or incoherent after this. Four Princes? And switching from Theft to a Word he dislikes? It's like some sort of horrible game of Go Fish where your reward for collecting all four of a set is being devoured.

"This is rather early for making any big decisions," says the Habbalite. "I won't hold the indecision against you. Keep the option in mind, and if you decide that you'd like to discuss the matter further, tell me so."

"Hey, you want to give me. A sales pitch, I'm listening." I smile up at the Habbalite. It inclines its chin in a sort of nod, and slices an entire row of scars off my forearm in one move.

I'm really tired of screaming.

It has to roll me over a few times, to get to everything. Scars and brands and a few tattoos, most of them on my upper back and arms, because that's where she could get to more easily when she had me tied down in that one chair. And she never liked stooping down for anything. Some sort of sensitivity about height, I don't know, this hurts and I'm howling and this _hurts_ , like I don't have the words for the sharp and abrupt and burn as separate things anymore, just this knife moving through my skin.

I wonder if I'm going to lose a Force. There's a first time for everything.

When it's done with those, there's some business of walking around that I'm not paying attention to. Meaningless noise. Then it grabs my face, and says in that exquisitely polite voice, "If you don't open your eyes, I might as well take them out."

So I do open my eyes, and stare back into its golden gaze. "This is getting old," I say, in one of my least convincing sentences spoken all day. "All knife work? You haven't got any other schticks?"

"I was saving the exciting options for the Djinn," it says. "I don't mean this as any slight to you, but I haven't been angry at you for long enough to put myself to a lot of trouble on your behalf. However, I always appreciate some constructive criticism. Am I still not meeting the standards of your previous teacher?"

"She didn't need an artifact to keep me locked down." Truth, that. She preferred to fuck with my head until I didn't know which was up, much less out of the chair.

"We all have our indulgences, and you'll have to allow me this one. Not for my own sake, you understand, but for the sake of the building we're in, which you've already damaged once. I should hate to annoy a friend further." It traces out a square along my cheek, and I cannot tell if it's thinking of skin to remove or where to add one, and I do not want to know. "Make a request, and I'm willing to listen."

"There's a lighter in my jacket pocket. Do I really have to think of everything myself?"

It stops with the edge of its thumb pressing into the corner of my mouth. "I have name," it says. "If you want to make requests, you ought to use that."

If I don't die here, I am going to kill it. Somehow. I really will. And I hate that I can remember its name. "There's a lighter in my jacket pocket, Unathi. If you can't figure out how to turn it on, just ask, and I'll walk you through the process."

"We'll have to work on your manners," the Habbalite says.

It gets the lighter from the remains of my clothing. Looks like it can figure out the basic operation of it without any trouble, and I wish I had not--no, I don't want to lose more pieces of myself, and fire can't kill me. It can't kill me. It can make me scream, but it can't kill me, or destroy me, not the way some other things can, and I am _used to this_ , I knew how to a handle this one from years of practice, and oh god I wish fire didn't burn me.

I once arranged the death by fire of three people in my college, I don't remember how many injured, so that I could ask my Prince to be made immune to this, and he took that away when he threw me away to some other Prince who didn't even want me, just a tool, and when I ran to him and found another Prince who'd let me stay something like myself, except it didn't work that way, he _stole_ me, and I have not thought about those deaths in all this time because I didn't care any more for a one of them than this Habbalite cares for me.

"That's enough for now," the Habbalite says. It wipes tears from my face with the back of its hand. "I've never been one to do much with fire. Knives are so much more precise, and easier to contain. The novelty value is worth something, though. Now I ought to return the favor, and find something that's entirely new to you."

I can smell smoke. But I think that's just me.

"You could make suggestions," it tells me, and it sounds faintly disappointed. I can't be witty when I can't put together a sentence without screaming, and if I open my mouth I will start screaming again. "Is it unfair of me to ask you to suggest something new? You have an imagination, and you could use it."

I don't want to imagine anything right now. I want this to stop hurting. I want to come up with a better plan than _wait_.

"I suppose I'll try a few approaches that seem unlike the habits of your previous teacher," the Habbalite says, "and you can let me know when I reach something you haven't experienced before. Recall that we could stop this at any time, if you wanted to discuss the job offer seriously." It looks toward the other side of the room from Zhune, where there's...I don't know, I haven't exactly been paying attention in that direction. "Primum, come over here and try something out."

There's a Shedite in the room. A listener all along, and one more person I need to kill when this is over. Not so big as Eder (what is that idiot Joker _doing_ out there? is the joke really on me?) but big enough to wrap itself around me. Its slime is like ice on my burns, a terrible idea, and I'm already making horrible whimpering noises before it. Crawls. Down my throat.

It's inside me and I can't get it _out_ and it's not so bad as being in my mind, it's not, I will keep believing that because I can't breathe and all I can taste or see is this demon that I've never known or met except for that it's all the way inside me and I wonder if this is what working for Lust feels like all the time, like I could almost feel sorry for what I did to Anthony if it was like this for him before.

It's gone. It's not gone, it's just not in me. Close enough. Too fucking close. I can't see it, but now I know it's there, behind me, and that it could come back any time, and I can't stop shaking.

There's a lot of things I can't do today.

Unathi crouches beside me, and watches. Maybe this time it cares more about my reaction than it does about my Djinn's. "First time?" it asks, and oh god in heaven that sounds like _sympathy_. I know better, I really do, and if I'm not careful I'm going to start crying again.

"Yeah," I say. Every word I speak tastes like Shedite. "First time."

"Then we can stop there for a moment," Unathi says. "I'm not in a hurry. Maybe you can come up with a better suggestion for what we do next. Will you think about that?"

"Yeah."

"I have a name," it says.

"Yes, Unathi."

"Better." It stands up, and looks away, a frown creeping onto its face.

I can smell smoke, and it's not me.

There's a banging on the door to the room. That's not the cavalry, because this is not a movie and no one comes to rescue you. You have to rescue yourself. Sounds like security, come to tell the Habbalite that, oh, the owner wants to see you, there's a problem, maybe you want to come upstairs and get out because the building. Is on fire.

I start giggling, and I don't think I could stop that, either.

I wish I could see the expression on the Habbalite's face. But it's on the wrong side of me, and rolling over would be too hard, harder than words, rolling onto broken skin and broken hands, so I rest right here while it says, "Keep an eye on them, Primum," and. It leaves. Leaves the room with security because nothing interrupts your day quite like a burning building.

Zhune's about three yards away. Hasn't moved. Probably not dead. I roll onto my face. Everything hurts and everything is horrible, but we're both still alive in here. Kick with my bound feet until I roll onto my other side, and oh god this is going to hurt, topple over onto my back. Maybe a foot closer. Nearly there.

"What are you doing?" asks the Shedite. It flows past me, keeping watching on the two of us with various eyes. "What do you want to do, snuggle up? Unathi will be back soon, and it's not going to be happy with you at all. You haven't seen anything yet."

Onto my side. Onto my stomach. Never mind the noises I'm making, they are irrelevant to this part of the plan. Close enough? Not sure I can make it closer without, I don't know, breaking something new. Like that would matter. I've left char and skin and blood and residual Shedite slime on the floor during this sad, slow roll already.

"You can't do anything," the Shedite says, sounds exasperated now. It must not have permission to do--that thing--again or it would, I'm sure it would, but it _can't_. Not until Unathi gets back. "You should think about the offer it made. That's not something it offers everyone, you know."

I roll up ever scrap of Essence I have deep inside me, and shove it into one single shot, a line of entropy and all the running I can't do from here tied up into all the little bits of matter breaking apart in different directions, a straight line through the Discord on my soul out towards Zhune.

And when his chains break, it's the most glorious sight in the world.


	19. An Interlude, In Which I Am Not Of Much Help

Zhune ripped the Shedite apart, Force from Force, until it dissolved in his paws. It had tried to run for the door, but that was easy enough to block, and no one upstairs would hear it screaming.

When he was done, he tore the ropes off his partner's legs, and performed one of his fastest instances of lock-picking ever in getting the will shackles off Leo's wrists.

"This was your clever plan," he said, and picked up his Calabite. "Walk inside, and set the building on fire. Really?"

"More or less," Leo said, and cried out when Zhune adjusted his grip. "Sorry. That. No skin."

"This is going to hurt," Zhune said. He kicked through the door, and was almost disappointed to find no one waiting. The upstairs sounded plenty exciting, but he remembered where to find the stairs down, and the door to the river there.

"Already hurts," Leo said, so long after the comment that Zhune began to worry. "Can't get much worse."

"You might be surprised." Zhune set Leo down to pry open the river door. "Try to stay quiet. This isn't the most secure passageway, but it's better than running through a building you set on fire."

"It was a good plan," Leo said. "Eventually." He was panting, shaky uneven fast breaths that didn't want to let him sound like himself. "We need to go back."

"What?"

"That Habbalite is getting _away_."

"No," Zhune said, "we're getting away."

"But it--"

Zhune tossed Leo into the water, and dove in after him.

He hauled his attuned along, swatting away any of the aquatic demonlings that came to investigate the noise. When they broke up for air, and for Zhune to try to navigate this place--it had changed somewhat in the six hundred years since he'd last traveled it while properly conscious--Leo was saying, all over again, "I need to kill him."

"Later," Zhune said. "We have no time for revenge. Especially when you're implementing it through stupid plans."

"It was a good plan," Leo said. He didn't sound good. He sounded as if he might pass out at any moment, and on consideration, that could be some help to what Zhune needed to do. Some of these passageways did not make for pleasant travel.

"It relied to much on my response, when you hadn't told me anything beforehand," Zhune said. He wasn't even sure why he was arguing with the Calabite. Habit, perhaps. Or nerves. It must only be habit.

"I knew it would be fine," Leo said. "You always watch my back."


	20. In Which We Each Make Some Compromises

I don't remember when I passed out, but when I wake up I'm lying in the corner of a room full of VapuTech equipment. I'm cold and dripping, while Zhune is arguing with a Djinn in a lab coat, so I guess no one is perfectly happy right now.

Except I feel fine. Just fine. Fingers working and nothing _hurts_ , not even bruising. The skin's back on my arms, and I can barely recognize my own body because those scars are gone.

So I might be sitting in the middle of some Vapulan lab, sopping wet, with one shoe and one pair of pants and not a damn other thing in the world to my name, but this is a lot better than where I was...however long that was ago. Not long, I suspect. Maybe an hour. Maybe a lot less.

"And now it's awake," the Tech Djinn says, pointing at me. "You! Don't touch anything."

"If you really didn't want to help," Zhune says, "you could have just said no." He looks...as fine as he's ever going to in Djinn form, I suspect, with no vessel image to cover up what he really is. Back to unflappable calm, and I wish I had a little of that myself. I'm going to have to sit down and repress a whole new set of memories and realizations about this day when I next get a chance.

"And the next time I needed something back from Lightning, who would I call on for help? Your coworkers? The last time I tried that, I got my prototype back in a _bottle_." The other Djinn sniffs. She's projecting some sturdy female vessel, blond hair swept back in a tight bun. Looks kinda Russian, if I had to pick a part of the world for it. The shadow image of her true form beneath that is a dark winged jackal on gorilla legs, implanted with enough whirling golden tech to make a Habbalite proud. "Just don't...let it touch anything. I'll be back. Nothing. Especially the medical bed! Bad enough that it had to lie on that for it to work, you know I'll be days in recalibrating..."

She stalks out the door, muttering, and Zhune walks over to look down at me.

"Tell me we're not in Tartarus, Zhune."

"We're not in Tartarus," he says. "It's a Tech shop near the border of Perdition. Showcase up front, useful things here in the back. It seemed like the least likely place for anyone to go looking for a Calabite."

"And for a Djinn?"

"I can take care of myself," he says. "You should've stayed at home."

I pull myself to my feet, since there's no good reason to lie around now that I feel...fine. (I don't feel fine, but since that's purely on an intellectual and emotional level, I'm a lot better at repressing those reactions.) "That didn't look like taking care of yourself. That looked like not being able to get out. If you wanted to say thank you, I'm ready any time."

"You've never been to Shal-Mari," Zhune says, "and you thought that showing up here alone on a rescue mission would be a good place to start?"

"I didn't show up alone, you idiot. I came with Henry. We got through the border check fine, but once we ran into a little snag in finding you, he threw a hissy fit and went back home." Which is...near enough to the truth to suit both of us, I think.

"He took you to the gates?" Zhune would, I think, be frowning, if he had a vessel to show it on. As a Djinn, he just looks hunched and toothy. But the voice is the same. "Not any of the other ways in. Huh. He didn't want you to come here at all."

"I sort of got that impression after a while." But I do feel a little stupid for not realizing Henry would know a better way into Shal-Mari, and chose not to show it to me. Did he think that I'd give up and turn back because of a few obstacles on the way? "He suggested I go back to Stygia with him and work for him, instead."

"If people keep making you competitive job offers," Zhune says, "I'm going to need a better leash."

I snort, and fold my arms across my chest (I wish I had a shirt) so that I don't poke any of that Djinn's precious, precious tech. "Maybe if they ever made me _good_ offers. I am so over working for Habbalah. Anyway, we have a few more things to do before heading home."

Zhune stares at me with several eyes. "Leo, have you not been watching the news? The Boss is unlikely to want us jaunting about on a Shal-Mari vacation right now. That would be...unwise."

"Vacation, nothing. I owe a few people repayment." And because I think that expression is a dubious one, I clarify, "For their help, not the revenge type of repayment. I can wait a while longer on taking care of that."

"You can forget taking care of that," Zhune says. "Revenge is a waste of time and resources."

"Yes, but I can't forget about paying debts I owed. I need to give this one kid a boost in running further before Unathi catches up with him, and there's a Shedite I owe a serious favor. Can we take it back to Stygia with us?"

"Is it a Geas?"

"No." Not that favor, anyway. This is not the right moment to tell Zhune about the other debt I picked up, though it'll be obvious once we're in Stygia and the contract details lock in.

"Then you can forget it."

"Zhune," I say, nice and polite, because this has been a very trying day but he's the wrong person to take it out on, "I made promises. I pay my debts. Hasn't this always been the case since you've known me?"

"Then we'll send it a nice postcard," Zhune says, "and mail it the next reliquary we swipe. Getting back to Stygia will be complex enough without adding a third person to the trip."

"No." This is not anywhere near the hardest thing I've had to do today, so I stare him right back down. "I made a promise. We're taking it with us. And stop trying to detach me from someone you haven't even _met_. I'm not going to keep it, I'm just giving it a hand with some old problem."

"You don't even like Shedim," Zhune points out. Which is rather beside the point, and something I am _not thinking about_ right now. Not thinking about what they taste like or feel like, and some of that must be on my face, because he rolls a few eyes, and says, "So long as you're not keeping it. And so long as we can get out of Stygia without you setting anything else on fire. Did you miss the memo on how we're supposed to deal with Lust?"

"Nothing else on fire. Got it." I lean my head against the wall, a weird angle because of the horns hitting it first. "Zhune? You've got to stop doing this."

It leans against some sparkling column of horrific technological madness. "Saving you from your own plans?"

"Ha. Good one. No, I mean this thing where you're making sure I don't make any friends or allies that you haven't vetted first and gotten your own claws into before I arrive. I took psych classes, you know. I recognize a textbook case of deliberate isolation when I see one." I snort at the way he prepares to say something, and keep going right over him. "You can do it all you want. I was never very good at making friends with demons anyway. But stop pretending that's not what you're doing. You want me all to yourself, fine. It's a Djinn thing. But I can _see that_ , and I don't like you acting like it's my fault that I don't have any connections in Theft yet."

Zhune settles back on a few paws, and stares at me for a long moment.

"No more setting buildings on fire while you're inside them," he says.

"I already knew there was an exit to the--"

"No more. Not again."

"Fine," I say. "So long as we're both clear on this."

He rolls some shoulders about. "Clear as glass."

The Tech Djinn stomps back into the room, and throws a t-shirt at me. "There. Put it on. Don't touch anything else." She hands Zhune a small device of no clear use. "That should get you through." The next thing she throws at me is a pair of gloves, which I do catch. "Put those on. Don't touch anything in here with your bare skin. Understood?"

And that's why when we finally get back to Stygia, I'm shivering in the cold, but wearing a t-shirt for Bits and Bites Genius Inventions. Which, under the circumstances, isn't half as bad as this day could've gone.


	21. An Interlude, In Which My Partner Has A Private Conversation

Zhune made sure the Shedite was left outside, before entering the Boss's current headquarters. There were orders to play nicely with Dark Humor, and then there was the choice to bring one of them into a more private area on the tail end of an extraordinarily bad day. Best not to push his luck. 

This decision was proven correct when he saw the state of the waiting room. A tornado might have destroyed less of the walls and contents, because a tornado did not have the spiteful direction that a Calabite Prince could give his resonance. The doorkeepers sat on a stack of furniture remains, watching others work on cleanup.

"Do you have an appointment?" the Lilim asked him. "Because if you don't, this is a bad time."

"Free advice," said the Impudite next to her. "One a time. That way, if you step in at the wrong moment, at least the next guy standing has a little warning, right?" His smile was trying to be nasty, but it looked uncomfortable. No, Impudites were never happy with the Boss's moments of rage. It probably said something about the doorkeepers' reliability in sorting the wanted from unwanted, despite the personal quirks of each, that they had survived the destruction.

"Wait here," he said to Leo, and shrugged to the Lilim on his way through the door. The mirror was cracked now, and showed jagged reflections of other versions of him.

He had been less ragged as a Djinn of the Game, but that was to be expected. The transfer process had left its scars.

When he stepped into the Boss's room, it was for an instant a maelstrom of nothing. Objects and space and Forces warping across each other, a place his mind refused to accept as real.

And then Valefor looked at him, and it was only one of the standard meeting rooms hidden about Stygia and linked from wherever the Boss felt like linking them. The Boss was picking Forces methodically off a little Djinn in her hands.

"Zhune," Valefor said, and she smiled at him. He knew how dangerous that smile was, and wondered in a distant way if Leo had any idea who he looked like when he used that same expression. "I hear you got into some trouble over in Shal-Mari." She plucked the last celestial Force from the Djinn, and its corpse dissolved while she collected...Forces, Zhune assumed, though he couldn't see them himself, and wound them about her hands.

"I did," he said. "We're out now."

"I also heard that you lost that vessel I gave you--what did I say about that last time? 'Make this one last, Zhune.' If I'm remembering right. To, what, a pack of angels?"

"Malakim," Zhune said.

"Malakim," Valefor said, and shook her head. "Can't live with them, can't make them Fall. Though someone gives it an honest shot every century or two, just for the amusement value. You could've sped up that operation, given that we still lost six safehouses from the information drop. Sloppy work."

"Sorry, Boss," Zhune said. He wanted--and wanting was always dangerous--to have a vessel to sit inside. Couldn't do style as a Djinn, it never worked, but a vessel could have some style.

"Could be worse," Valefor said philosophically. "There's been a lot of sloppy work going around lately." Her hands swept back and forth, knotting together invisible strands in the air. "And then your partner tried to burn down a neighborhood of Shal-Mari. Do we need to have another talk with the kid? Or do you want a replacement?" A last rough jerk of her hands, and she held a Balseraph there. It dangled by the wings from her hand. "Want this one? It hasn't picked up any bad habits, yet. You could teach it some."

"I don't want a new partner," Zhune said.

Valefor flung the Balseraph to the door, and turned to Zhune while it scurried out. "Good," she said, "because I'll have work for you soon. But you've got to get better at keeping the kid quiet. Calabim of Fire aren't so hard to come by as Game Djinn, and I can still fill out my collection if I lock him in a box somewhere." She looked him up and down, and he could feel the vessel settle over him. "I can use the cheap tools if I want kamikaze action."

He sometimes wished that he didn't love his Prince quite so much. But old habits were hard to break. Old habits only ever broke if someone more powerful put a hand in to do the breaking.

"I'd like to keep him here for a while," Zhune said. "He needs more experience in Hell. I think it would help."

"Did you talk back to Azzie this way, Zhune? Back when he was giving you orders?"

"No, Boss."

"Why's that? Do you think he's smarter than I am?"

He had seen other demons fall apart at questions like this. He'd heard this one before. "No, Boss. More rigid."

"I want the two of you on the corporeal," Valefor said. "You're more useful there. But don't worry. I'll fix this problem for you. You've still got a little credit to spare on your account."


	22. In Which Some Things Do Change

"He'll be fine," says the Impudite, when Zhune's gone inside. Ben, I think, if he's the same one I spoke with the last time I was in Hell. Which was the time I brought a Cherub of Judgment down for a playdate. I really don't get down here often enough.

Given how it works out every time I do come back to Hell, maybe I come here far too often.

"He's always fine," says the Lilim, hugging knees to her chest. She's in the same patchwork shirt she was last time, and this time around it's reminding me uncomfortably of the patches on Unathi's body. "That bastard always comes out looking good. You should watch your back. When things fall apart, he won't be the one who takes the blame."

I shrug with my wings. "Not much I can do about that, is there?"

Ben picks a coin out of the rubble around him, and tosses it into the air. "Some things in life are inevitable. Death and theft."

I'd correct the saying, but I think he has a point. He also has a decent jacket, and I'm trying to figure out how I could cadge it off him to stop all this shivering when the Lilim reaches over to grab his collar. "Cold?" she asks me.

"Not really."

She nods, and lets go of his collar. He goes back to tossing and catching his coin like nothing happened. And since I don't feel like playing the friendly Calabite right now, I don't say anything to break the silence until a sweet little Balseraph glides out of the mirror. The Lilim and Calabite exchange significant glances, and then she wiggles two fingers at the Balseraph. "Come here, sweetie. You want a name, don't you?"

It takes work not to fiddle with the Geas band sitting below the sleeve of my shirt. And I'm just as glad to go walking through when the knowing drops into my head that, yes, my Prince wants to speak with me _now_.

Joy.

I step into the room, and Zhune's already looking like his new vessel. So that's the main request taken care of, and I'm glad I didn't have to ask for it this time. (Though if Valefor ever asks _me_ what sort of vessel Zhune should get... I have ideas.) My Prince doesn't look like she did the last few times, but that's the privilege of Princes. And it's the nature of them that I know exactly who Valefor is, even seeing her look different.

"Leo," she says, and beckons me closer, which I've got no choice but obey. She catches my chin in her hands, and grins at me. "You've been having fun. And you were there, so go ahead and tell me, how do you rate your performance? Just these last twenty-four hours."

"Partial credit for taking the initiative," I say, "but a lot of points docked for noise, lack of style, and not sticking the landing. I'd call it a C-."

She ruffles my hair. "Got it in one. I stole you a smart one, Zhune, didn't I?" I get a modicum of space when she steps back to look over the two of us. "Fortunately for both of you, today I'm giving out extra credit for _getting the fuck back home_ , seeing how a disappointing number of people couldn't. Both of you are going back to the corporeal to pick up the slack, seeing as other people are busy making explanations, or _getting caught_."

The room around me shivers, and I think I can hear thunder.

But Valefor's smile for the two of us is all arch friendliness, a Superior who's fond of some of her more entertaining pets. "One more thing, before you go. A little present for you, Leo. Zhune thinks you don't get enough vacation time back home, and I'm inclined to agree. So I'm going to fix that."

Her hand sweeps through me, and catches on my Discord, and _pulls_.

I can't move. I can barely see, shouldn't be able to see what she's holding, a writhing net that surrounds me and stretches out between her fingers. "Just look at this," she says. "Binding you to the corporeal. You do good work there, Leo. Don't get me wrong. But that's not home, and I don't think it's fair to you that you're so...stuck." She turns a terrifying smile on Zhune. "Want to find out what happens if you pull all the Discord off a Calabite?"

He makes a noise at the back of his throat.

"Thought so. But I've tried that before, and if I wanted to make things explode, I've got easier ways." She looks back at me, twisting my Discord about her fingers. What the Habbalite did to me was pain, physical as anything can get in Hell, but this feels like she's stretching out my soul. Like I might shiver right apart into nothing if her fingers slip. "Leo, kid. You've done this before, haven't you? Who was it that time?"

I can't speak, but I think, _Michael,_ and she nods. "You keep the weirdest company. It's one of the things that makes you fun to watch. Now hold still while I fix this." Discord runs between her fingers, twisting and shifting into another color, another shape, and when she lets go it snaps back into me so hard I drop to the ground. "Better," she says, and I wonder if she knows why that makes me twitch. I don't want to know. I need to get better at repressing things. "Don't play with fire. It's bad for your health."

She turns away to do whatever it is Princes do when they're busy, and the two of us know an exit cue when we see one.


	23. An Epilogue, In Which I Keep My Promise

We find Henry in his alleyway. He tries to look pleased to see us, but it's a losing proposition.

Zhune lifts him by the throat, and says, "I was under the impression that in my absence you would watch out for my partner. Just until I got back."

"I tried to watch him," Henry insists. He has too much sense to thrash in that grip. "I did what I could to keep him from wandering, but there's no telling some people anything. Children get it in their heads to follow some wild goal, and can't be dissuaded."

"You took him by the official border," Zhune says mildly. "Where they do checks through the Game's files on people who want to pass. How did you think that was going to go? Did you expect that to dissuade him in a way that wouldn't cause any permanent damage?"

"You said he was clever--"

"Henry," Zhune says, and sighs. "You try these arguments on me, and they never work. I thought you would have learned by now. Do you think Carol will be very put out if I tell her she needs another gatekeeper?"

"He got me halfway there," I say, and the two of them look at me like I've just interrupted a private conversation. Which I get to do when they stand around referring to me in the third person. "Half credit, right?"

"Half credit," Zhune concludes. "What do you want to make up for it?"

I point back at Eder, who's been dead silent since we hit Stygia. We had to remove folded notes from its body a half dozen times already, before they were dissolved in slime and never delivered. "I promised it a trip to the corporeal and back. We need passage for the Shedite along with us, and a Soldier for it to ride. Someone experienced enough to lend it a hand, since it's not very experienced there."

"Carol doesn't like lending out her Soldiers," Henry says, trying to delicately pluck Zhune's fingers away from his throat. He's not succeeding.

"That's why you get to explain it to her," I say, and smile. Nicely.

#

All three of us end up in the Tether bathroom with a box of spare clothes, trying to figure out what we look like now. My vessel I'm used to already; not very tall, not very conspicuous, a sort of skinny male look that hovers in the twenty to thirty range depending on how I dress and how I carry myself. Zhune's taller again, which annoys me, and sexier, which he can have, because I really don't want the attention. He's swapped out jackets three times now, trying to find one that goes with his new skin tone. "I've been white since Miami," he explained, when I asked.

I'm clothed. That's all I ask for.

Eder keeps staring in the mirror. Or the Soldier does, but Eder's in her head, so the effect's about the same. "I don't know about this," she says, and backs away from the mirror like it might bite. "Maybe I should go back. I don't even know the language, except that this host speaks it because I'm speaking it and..." She shakes her head. "I don't like it here."

"I promised you that I'd get you what you wanted," I say. "Don't back out now." I pull her away from Zhune's fashion parade, and stuff a sheet of paper into her hand. "Here. These are the addresses to three different Tethers of Trade within a day's drive. Your host knows how to drive, and how to read an address, so you just tell them what to do, and sit back until you get there. From that point on--you can figure out what to do. You're Dark Humor. You've been pulling pranks on the worst demons in Hell for centuries, and I'm pretty sure you can figure out from there what you want. Okay?"

Eder blinks several times, and looks at Zhune, who is pointedly ignoring her. Then back to me. "Okay," she says. "If you're sure--"

"Look," I say. "The longer you fuss over this, the harder it gets. Just go and do it. You'll feel better afterward. And if anyone asks how you got there, you keep my name _out_ of this, got it?" I take back the paper, and look down the list. "Watch out for the third one. It's got the best security, and a lot of staff. So pick one of the other two unless you can't think of any other way to go. Got it?"

"Got it," Eder says. She runs her hands through her hair, and then looks down at her hands again. "Goodbye, Leo."

"Yeah, goodbye. I'll look for you the next time I'm in Shal-Mari." Which should be half past _never_ if I have anything to say about it.

Zhune finally settles on the least bad option out of the clothing lot, and puts the box away. "What was all that about?"

"I promised to give it what it wanted, if it helped me back in Shal-Mari. And it did."

Zhune eyes me narrowly. "I knew that. What did it want?"

"It was abandoned by Trade a few centuries back, and Fell hard. It wants to get back at them." That's enough explanation for Zhune to put the matter aside, and go looking for a car we can steal.

Back at. Back to. Whatever.


End file.
